Re: Strategic Java Usage/Productivity

["Bruce Jin" <brucej@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A couple of examples that compare RPG  to Java/OOP.
1. Servlet containers such as Websphere and Tomcat allow people to program
servlet according to a set of interfaces. We implement HttpServlet class and
talk to Request and Response interfaces. That it. This brings productivity
and system efficiency.
RPG cannot do this. RPG CGI is awkward to code and inefficient to run.

2. Someone stated that thousands of subfiles out there are doing the same
thing. I think this is true. For each subfile one has to deal with
ROLLUP(26) ROLLDOWN(27), PUTRETAIN, DSPATR,   PUTOVR etc. etc. Then one has
to hard wire this subfile to a RPG program that is hard wired with database
access code and data display code. Very low productivity.

OOP allows people to program to interface.  This makes it very easy to
separate and reuse code according to functions such as presentation and
business logic. An example is Eclipse project. People have written hundreds
of applications for it. To add an application to Eclipse one only needs to
drop the application folder to a folder in Eclipse. No programming and no
configuration.
RPG cannot do this. It has no OO capability to handle this kind of
flexibility, extensibility, and pluggability.

3. Even  used as procedural programming language, Java is far superior than
RPG. With 6,000+ classes, Java offers numerous utilities and many
frameworks. As of V5R2, RPG has only a few dozen simple built in functions.
4. RPG may perform better. This is of importance only in isolated
situations. Besides, computers are getting faster daily. Today's computers
are several orders of magnitude faster than they were ten years ago.

5. Suggestion: use Java as the norm and RPG as exception.