RE: What counts as technically slick?

On the surface it seems like a good idea, but what have you gained? 

I still have to define the record in my program, so if the file changes I
still have to change all the programs that use that file. 

Also, if I do the READ in my program, it's obvious what I am doing, and
error handling is pretty straight forward. If I call a separate program
which does the READ, what have I gained? I have all the overhead of a
program call and no clear advantage, that I can see. All you're doing is
adding one more layer of complexity.

The only place where a program like this would be useful is if it is called
from a CL program.



Albert York     

        -----Original Message-----
        From:   Rob Dixon [SMTP:rob.dixon@erros.co.uk]
        Sent:   Sunday, April 08, 2001 2:15 AM
        To:     MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
        Subject:        Re: What counts as technically slick?

        Albert

        > Years ago I was called in to work on a new application that was
having
        > severe performance problems. The designers had come up with a
great way
        > (they thought) to control file access. For each file, they wrote a
"server"
        > program. The application programs accessed the file only through
these
        > server programs. Files were not opened directly, all reads,
writes, and
        > updates were done through these calls. Naturally this caused a
performance
        > hit by itself  But on top of that, for some reason, they coded all
of these
        > server programs to set on LR before returning. We gained big boost
simply by
        > removing that one line from each program. Then, as the application
was
        > maintained, we got rid of the server programs and brought the
files back
        > into the program.

        Getting rid of LR was obviously a good idea, but I cannot see a
reason for
        getting rid of the "server " programs.  I separated my User
Interface logic from
        database logic many years ago and got average response times on a
B10 of about
        0.3 - 0.4 seconds.  This was far better than most people expected on
a B10.  I
        don't believe that there was a significant performance hit. If you
have more than
        one program that calls each of the server programs, and you have had
to modify
        each of those, you surely have much more code to maintain as a
result.

        Best wishes

        Rob
        ________________________________________________________

        Erros plc

        44 (0) 1844 239 339

        http://www.erros.co.uk - The AS/400 Neural Database for the Internet

        _________________________________________________________


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