In Defense of AS/Set (was Re: BPCS support alternatives)

Ian,

In a message dated 9/15/00 8:26:21 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
ian.bunn@progeny400.com writes:

> You'd think that after 10 years AS/SET would be a more stable product
>  generating far more efficient code.  I personally think that the reliance 
on
>  this product was a contributory factor of the decline of SSA - it simply
>  didn't improve the BPCS product and did not improve application development
>  times especially when using the BPCS shell program.  In the early days, I
>  remember going in an physically fixing the subfile routines :-( ... 
somebody
>  pass me my pipe and slippers!

How true!  They chose the tool for BPCS, and then immediately took AS/Set off 
of the open market which meant that only SSA, preexisting AS/Set owners, and 
catastrophic bug fixes (in that order, read the latter as "litigable") drove 
the improvement of AS/Set.  Not that improvements were _that_ forthcoming 
beforehand.  I worked for an AS/Set resale partner starting at version 2.0.  
Said partner dropped Synon because AS/Set was a better product at the time!

In the years we sold the product, the only major improvements made were 
fixing the problem with the generator blowing up (four years after it 
started), International Keyboard Support (remove the @ sign from the front of 
commands), DBCS support (don't remember asking for that one, or any of the 
others for that matter), and Y2K compliance for the date routines.  The thing 
still generates V1R2 code, incorrectly parses SQL statements (and does so by 
completely stopping code generation), and continues to generate nonsensical 
NAARGx code for its functions.

HOWEVER, if you know how to use it properly, it _CAN_ be used to generate 
more solid code than you could in the same timeframe by hand.  Unfortunately, 
few (including SSA) know _HOW_ to use it properly.  Also unfortunately, 
simple changes could have made this a _GREAT_ product.  A "killer app".  I've 
often wished to have a copy of the source code to AS/Set for just six 
months...

>  I know that there are a number of companies and houses out there who have
>  used AS/SET to develop extras to your BPCS suite and for mods, the use of
>  this product was necessary but I certainly am one of many people who will 
be
>  glad to see the back of it.

You're certainly not the only one.  I count myself among them, although I 
would not had even a minimal effort toward the improvement of AS/Set been 
attempted...

Regards!

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC  USA
E-mail:  DAsmussen@aol.com

"Anyone who is not liberal in their youth has no heart.  Anyone who is not 
conservative in their adulthood has no brain." -- Winston Churchill
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