Re: DFTACTGRP(*YES) vs ACTGRP(*Caller)

Well that gives me all the confidence to pursue ILE COBOL :). Considering
our reason for not doing ILE yet was time and money :). Thanks for all you
input.

Thanks,
Jeff Buening

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message: 7
date: Wed, 4 Nov 2009 15:31:23 -0500
from: Jon Paris <jon.paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: Re: [COBOL400-L] DFTACTGRP(*YES) vs ACTGRP(*Caller)

Anything other than a simple answer is too complicated so I'll stick
with that for the most part.

The simple answer is money.

The slightly less simple version is that at the time that we convinced
management to produce an ILE version of COBOL there were very severe
budget restrictions on the team. COBOL only bought in about 20% of the
revenue that RPG did, and they had to build a new compiler from
scratch - RPG could use the SAA compiler base which in theory made it
look cheaper. Within that budget they could either live without OPM
compatibility, or not build it. According to development it was very
difficult to do in part because the original OPM COBOL run unit stuff
was a bit ... well "weird" would be the best word. I was one of those
who decided that it was better to live without than wait another
release cycle and perhaps lose the funding and staff completely.

The hope was that once the new compiler was in place we could add the
compatibility features. For many reasons that I was not really party
to, that didn't happen. The requirement to perhaps retrofit it had
not featured as strongly in the design as it should have and it turned
out to be even more difficult (and therefore expensive) to do.
Sigh ... and the money was never forthcoming - in part because not
enough customers cared enough to complain.


Jon Paris