Re: Activation group vs Procedure

["David Morris" <dmorris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ron,

I agree that maintaining n copies of a program to support recursive calls 
is a little convoluted.  Using *NEW in this case makes a lot more sense.  If 
you decide to change your routines to sub-procedures, you will need to 
do quite a bit more evaluation of your programs.  Any global values will 
have to be localized.  Opens will also be shared which may require some 
restructuring of your applications.  Your may also want to spend some time 
identifying the common parts of these programs and supporting them in 
separate, shared routines.  Converting to sub-procedures is probably a lot 
of work, *NEW may be a good starting point/compromise.

David Morris

>>> HwaRangRon@aol.com 11/20/99 09:28AM >>>
Reading the manuals seem to raise more questions than they answer.

We currently have a program that presents a browse window over any of 50 
files. Each file is user controlled open, controlled by a code passed to the 
program. Once the subfile is presented, the user can optionaly enter a 
request to go directly to the maintenance program for that file. Once in a 
maintenance program, the potential exists for the user to request the browse 
window again and cause a recursion error. Currently to handle this, we call 
the browse window program from a CL program that monitors for the recursion 
error message and calls a clone of the browse window rpg program if 
necessary. We know from analyzing our software, that you can never get more 
than 3 deep, so we have 3 clones of the program. This works, but it is very 
messy!

I thought I would change the browse rpg program into a procedure, since 
procedures are recursive. But then, I came across this in the manual
QUOTE:
If you create an ILE RPG program with ACTGRP(*NEW), you can then call the 
program as many times as you want without returning from earlier calls. With 
each call, there is a new copy of the program. Each new copy will have its 
own data, open its files, etc.. However, you must ensure that there is some 
way to end the calls to 'itself'; otherwise you will just keep creating new 
activation groups and the programs will never return. 
ENDQUOTE

So, my question is "Whats the better way to handle this, procedure or new 
activation group?" As a follow-up, if activation group *NEW, then whats the 
best way to end the calls to itself?

Ron

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