RE: VARPG Question... -- CODE400-L

Chris,

Yes, most of the coding from the green screen world works in VARPG. One of
the major differences are the GUI opcodes.   The biggest hurdle I had was
thinking in an Event Driven programming model instead of the Procedural
(top down) programming model.  I suggest the book "VisualAge for RPG" by
Meyers and Sutherland (ISBN: 1882419839). It is pretty much what I used to
learn VARPG.  It is a little dated now though.  I also spent a lot of time
just playing around with VARPG to see what it could do.

-- Scott




                    Chris Proctor
                    <cproctor@gartspor        To:     
"'code400-l@midrange.com'" <code400-l@midrange.com>
                    ts.com>                   cc:
                    Sent by:                  Subject:     RE: VARPG Question...
                    code400-l-admin@mi
                    drange.com


                    02/19/2002 03:12
                    PM
                    Please respond to
                    code400-l






This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand
this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.
--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
Thanks for all the info that everyone has been sending me.

Our stores do have a constant TCP/IP connection with the host 400. If I
don't have to use ODBC for the connection, then it sounds like I might be
able to write the app in VARPG. There would be one PC at the service desk
at
each store, handling the returns. So, basically, it sounds like the VARPG
program resides on the PC, but accesses data in the same manner that an
AS/400 application would, is this correct? That is, I would write the
programs almost in the same manner (with a few differences), but I would
chain to files, load subfiles, etc. in almost the same manner, with the
exception of a GUI interface.

Scott, to answer your question, yes, I did install VARPG with code/400. I
have pulled up the project and looked at some of the examples.  It's the
"how did they get to this point" that has me confused. I pulled up the GUI
designer and went insane! ;-)  The tutorials don't work at all!!

Is there a step-by-step tutorial somewhere that does work?

Thanks again to everyone!

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Johnson [mailto:sjohnson@highsmith.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2002 1:59 PM
To: code400-l@midrange.com
Subject: Re: VARPG Question...



Chris,

You might get a better answer to this question on the VARPG newsgroup, but
here is my 2 cents worth.

The biggest question I have back to you is: What is the connection between
the stores and the iSeries?  If they have a constant TCP/IP connection with
some good bandwidth, then VARPG would work great.  VARPG does not use ODBC
when it connects to an iSeries for data. It uses its own connection
methods. There is a signon, or you can default it for the user and they
don't have to sign on. Since the VARPG app runs locally at the store, there
should not be a performance issue there. The performance issue may come
from the 170+ stores hitting the database on the server.  If the server can
handle it, then no problem.  I would say the only performance issue you may
have is the bandwidth between the stores and the server.  If this
connection is slow, then the db accesses in the VARPG app would be slow.

Hopefully this answers your questions.  If you installed VARPG when you
installed CODE, some examples got installed too.  Go looking for them on
your drive and start playing with VARPG.  VARPG is a great development
environment and has come a long way!
--
------------------------------------------------------
Scott P. Johnson
Applications Development Team Coordinator
Microcomputer Development Specialist
IBM Certified Specialist - AS/400 RPG Programmer
Highsmith Inc.
W5527 Hwy 106, PO BOX 800
Fort Atkinson, WI 53538-0800
TEL:  920-563-9571                FAX:  920-563-7395
sjohnson@highsmith.com
www.highsmith.com
------------------------------------------------------