Re: OS400 V5R4 and BPCS V4.0.05 Non Century Dated (cd by Nexgen)

DSPPGM
All creation data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : *YES
Observable information . . . . . . . . . . . . . : *ALL
Compiler . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Earliest release that program can run

Some article, decades ago, suggested compressing out observable
information to save space. This was back when disk was measured in MB and
not GB. Many people did this. Of course this caused issues going to 6.1.
Other people compressed out observable information to make it harder to
'decompile' a program. IBM has ways now to compress out enough
information to protect vendors intellectual property while still allowing
programs to migrate. On currently supported versions of the OS you
compress your little heart out and not have any issue. In fact I 'think'
it goes back to V5R1 or higher compiled to V5R1 or higher. You're not up
to V5R1 and if you were BPCS had this nasty habit of using old hardware
and compilers and compiling to a really old version of the OS to allow it
to run on older releases. They've now realized the folly of their ways.
Their web site now says they will not support any version of the OS not
currently supported by IBM. You have to be running 6.1 or higher.

<snip>
To convert a program, its creation data, which is a subset of
observability, must be available.
MI programs retain creation data by default, so that most programs can be
converted, going
all the way back to programs that were originally created for System/38.
Even if an option was
chosen to remove creation data from external access, Licensed Internal
Code (LIC) can still
access the creation data if the target releases of the program and its
constituent modules are
V5R1 or later. Thus a program lacks sufficient creation data for
conversion only if the program
or at least one of its modules was created for IBM OS/400® V4R5 or an
earlier release and
creation data was explicitly removed.
</snip>



Rob Berendt