RE: RE: RE: What is Business Programming?

<Joe>
Paul, your applications are the first category, simple file maintenance.
They are DBUs.  You obviously have a nice framework for generating DBU.
Unless I take the time to write the proper skeletons, I cannot achieve
the same results.  I'm pretty sure Nathan's approach will give a
reasonable time, but I don't know.

</Joe>

1.        As I?ve stated, I?m about solving my customer?s problems
effectively and quickly, solving these problems often involves all three
application tiers you?ve specified.  Most ERP, MRP applications involves
various elements including complex computations, intelligent context
sensitive data inquiries, and routine file maintenance.  I fully understand
your perspective here however I recall your recent post stating your ability
to handle these so called ?routine processing much faster and more
effectively than OO or I could?.
2.        I have illustrated for you with direct code examples, the handling
of complex transactional processing involving price calculations effected by
the user?s default currency, the supplier of parts, taxation requirements,
and current currency conversions.  You compare the 50 or so lines of code
from RPG to Java but ignore the truly significant fact that I only write
those 50 lines and you write probably 1050 lines to fully complete the
applications requirements then you write the same code again for the next
problem.

<Joe>
But I don't really care about this class of code.  It's file
maintenance, and not particularly difficult.  I don't care how many of
these you throw up, eventually you will be done with file maintenance
and then you will have to write the application.  Until then, you are
merely repeating yourself.  One Work With screen is the same as any
other, which is why you can do what you're doing.  We typically assign
junior programmers to these kinds of programs; that's how they learn.
But automating it is good, too.
</Joe>

3.  I can scale my approach to any level you want from file maint to complex
processing.  Do you consider context sensitive (adding transactions based on
the selected user), associated data associations (workflow viewing of data
based on secured authentication), drill downs, flyweight expansion of
objects into full objects, dynamic conversion to business critical
applications such as Excel,  intelligent prompting of pick lists based on
peer values (When you pick account type of ?loan? you only get loan specific
sub-suffixes such as ?mortgage, line of credit, etc?) ?   Do you consider
this ?routine DBU stuff?.  I?m not saying this is better than sliced bread
but I am saying this stuff in addition to the other patterns are what is
needed to solve the majority of today?s business requirements in a fast,
effective manner.

4.     If these routines are so routine and simple why don?t you solve them
once and for all?  BTW,  where do we find these ?Jumior? RPG programmers to
handle these issues?  I haven?t seen colleges pumping out RPG programmers
for the industry to utilize and with all due respect I don?t find too many
younger programmers excited about doing so.  Haven?t we all seen Sarah K
struggle to maintain YIPS at Common?  Let me also state?  I bleed mostly
blue having spent a good portion of my life with the platform and still
believing strongly in the OS.


<Joe>
By the way, you also never answered the issue of the bugs I found in
your code.

Anyway, as soon as I get the forum up and running, I'll be prepared to
provide some real programming challenges.  However, I'm not sure how
long that will take; the open source forum has some bugs that I have to
work through before I can even try it out.

</Joe>

5.    If you?ve discovered a bug in the case sensitivity check of our price
calculation method, thank you.  Not to trivialize a software bug but I tend
to view the ramifications of our pervasive architecture discussions as the
?high value targets?.  I don?t have the time nor do I think the readers on
this thread  to discuss individual case sensitivity or IF/THEN/ELSE (?house
keeping?) flaws.   Simply bigger fish to fry.
6.    This new forum sounds interesting.  I?d be willing to help if you need
it.  I don?t see anything stopping you from posting your solutions to Nathan
?s and others business problems up to your web site for review and
demonstration until the forum is active, I think we are all waiting to see
results from the procedural approach.




Respectfully,  Paul Holm