RE: RPG400 vs. RPG ILE

["Dan Bale" <dbale@xxxxxxxxx>]

Buck's suggestion is a good starting point, but I would also add that RPG-IV
has many coding enhancements over RPG-III/400 that may impact run times
favorably as well.  For example, you may find in your RPG-III/400 code that
there are subroutines to work with strings or dates.  RPG-IV has many string
& date handling built-in functions that do not exist in RPG-III/400.

I might suggest that you contact Genexus to see if they can take one of your
existing Genexus development program specs that you "code" for the Genexus
program-generator and have them turn that into an RPG-IV program and send
you the generated source & compiled program object.  If it were me, I'd
probably choose a long-running batch program with string and/or date
handling.  Something like this *might* give you a good benchmark to compare
their generated RPG-III/400 and RPG-IV apps.  Not sure if I'm reading
correctly that no one in your shop understands RPG, so reviewing the
generated RPG-IV source might not apply in your case.  Again, if it were me,
I'd check the generated source to see that string & date handling functions
were using RPG's built-in functions and not Genexus-generated routines.  If
they were just using their own routines, then you might just as well use
CVTRPGSRC on all the generated source and compile those into RPG-IV
programs.

Thinking a little more than I should right now, but the other thing to keep
in mind about an RPG-IV source generator product is what level of backward
compatibility are they keeping the generator at?  For example, it might only
produce RPG-IV code that can compile at V3R2.  If so, you miss out on a
*LOT* of the string and date handling built-in functions that were added in
later releases.

- Dan Bale
(I am *NOT* "Dale"
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200105/msg00281.html )
SAMSA, Inc.
989-790-0507
DBale@SAMSA.com <mailto:DBale@SAMSA.com>
  Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur.
  (Whatever is said in Latin seems profound.)

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
[mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Buck Calabro
Sent: Friday, June 07, 2002 1:20 PM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: RE: RPG400 vs. RPG ILE


>Can somebody tell me if there are some
>advantages of programs RPG ILE vs. RPG400
>- speaking on the executable object level?
>Are RPGLE programs faster, or something
>like this?

On a RISC box (V4 and higher) I have seen RPG IV programs run between 10%
and 15% faster, just by doing a CVTRPGSRC and compiling.  Your software may
behave differently than the mix of programs that I have here.  I would run
some of the Genexus RPG source through CVTRPGPGM and compile it in the
default activation group.  Benchmark the RPG IV code over your data and see
what performance changes happen.
  --buck