Re: Get CHKLNK, CHKPFM, FNDSTR, etc programming utilities

I think you are somewhat off-base. 

First off, I am not exactly clear on how TAATOOLS plays into this.  While 
IBM provided this in the old days, that was a long time ago and I do not 
believe they were ever supported by IBM, nor where they ever enhanced 
much.  If you use TAATOOLS today then you purchased them from a 3rd party. 
 If you are saying that you used their source code as a starting point for 
your tools, then you are correct, you should not contribute those to the 
iSeries Toolkit as that would likely be a violation of your license terms.

I think you are correct that David is doing most or all of the work for 
the iSeries Toolkit, but the only way that is going to change is for 
people to contribute something.  You do not have any way to know how many 
people are using the toolkit, it could be a little, it could be a lot. One 
of the reasons I pointed you in that direction was that the tools you 
described seemed to matchup with what he is providing.  So it would make 
some sense to add your tools to his toolkit, or in the case of something 
like your CHKLNK command, extending the one David provides to have the 
features you want to add.

I guess my main point is that IBM is not going to do anything about any of 
this, so if you want a library of rich utilities the best you can do is 
support one of the efforts that are underway to provide such a library. 
David's is not the only one, and if you want you could always create your 
own.

Mark







craigs@xxxxxxxxx
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10/07/2003 09:52 AM
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        Subject:        Re: Get CHKLNK, CHKPFM, FNDSTR, etc programming 
utilities






Thanks for everyone's input so far.  I have been assured that IBM will not
open-source utilties.  My main concern with the iSeries toolkit is that I
was thinking it should be hosted, protected, and advertised by IBM.  For
example, TAATOOLS (the version we have not paid for) has CHKIFSE to do the
same thing as the CHKIFSOBJ.  They charge for it but they give source.
Would they come collecting on our hides?  Let's say someone develops a
utility and charges for it.  Someone else develops something similar and
makes it free.  Why would someone pay for something if they could get it
for free and with source?  My philosophy is that if we develop something
that IBM should have developed in the first place, we should not charge 
for
it.    I feel like TAATOOLS is taking over IBM's role in developing
utilities and they are probably doing a good job developing utilities
except they are charging.  I realize they need to get paid for their work.
I also realize the iSeries toolkit might not have all the tools we are
looking for and do exactly what we want.  I was implying that it appears
the popularity of this toolkit is not high and tools may be 
underdeveloped.
I am under the impression that people don't use it very much.  As Scott
pointed out, if people don't use it that much then one person could be
developing all the tools.  I think it is true that David Morris is the one
developing almost all of these utilities since his name is there as the
author on about every program except maybe 1 or 2.  I never even heard of
the iSeries toolkit until now.  If I did, I probably looked over it and
said that there wasn't anything there we could use and skipped over it.
I believe it is very important to enhance and create utilities.  In the
example of making the object parameter generic on CHK* commands.  Sure, 
you
could do a DSPOBJD or DSPFD to an outfile to search library objects and 
use
access() API for IFS.  But, just encapsulating these in single programs 
and
commands as general utilities allows programs wishing to use these
functions to include just a single call or command reference.  CHKLNK has
helped other programmers do just that.  Then all the error-checking and
functionality is in one place.  Even just including generic object
parameters.  I know the object or file member starts with something.  I
check for IFS object existence just to be extra sure the objects got
transferred from one system to another.  I thought I heard that FTP could
complete without errors and not transfer anything.  I wouldn't want to
delete the from objects in that case and I need them to be generic so I am
checking the right objects.  Many different file names come in and I need
to check for the ones that start with a certain string.  Or checking
members in a file.  I know it will start with such and such.  Just do a
simple CHKOBJ with generic parameters.
It appears that the momentum on the iSeries toolkit is not picking up.  Is
it worth sticking utilities out there to have the fear of someone coming
back and trying to collect on my hide?  Not right now unless I am way off.

Thanks,
Craig Strong

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