RE: interesting /. story on RPG

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: rob@dekko.com
>
> And to mention, what if your RPG program uses:
> - a screen with DDS.
> - a UIM panel
> - an externally defined file, but no SQL
> - any number of api's, including but not limited to QCMDEXC
> - an externally defined printer file
> - CL wrappers
> - *CMD objects
>
> I really don't see a 'flip the switch' solution.  Doesn't this start to
> degenerate down to 'SAA RPG'?

Porting OS/400 applications to Unix is much bigger than a breadbox.  I was
in charge of this project at SSA, and it's the reason I left - many things
that we take for granted in OS/400 are very difficult to accomplish in Unix,
and SSA left nearly all of them until the product was already announced.  We
got them working, but at the cost of a lot of good people who couldn't take
the stress.

It's not so much the RPG as the operating system support.  Two simple
examples that caused us no end of grief are OVRDBF and MONMSG.  Passing
parameters from one program to another is also not an easily accomplished
task, depending on how you architect the concept of a program call.  If you
do it via spawn, passing a pointer is really, really difficult.

There are a whole bunch of others.  Message files, library lists, all sorts
of things.  And APIs simply add a whole new dimension.

Joe