RE: Laymans explaination for single level store?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Walden H. Leverich [mailto:WaldenL@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 1:29 PM
> To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
> Subject: RE: Laymans explaination for single level store?
> 
> 
> >in order to allow programs
> >to run on different hardware without re-compiling. 
> 
> I've always had a problem with this statement. Remove 
> observability and
> how far do you get on hardware changes? 

Actually, pretty far now-a-days.  Removing observability doesn't effect the
system's ability to recreate the program object anymore.

So when we move to a 128bit CPU as long as the program was created recently
(v4 or v5???) it won't matter if the program has observability or not.

> Aren't you really recompiling
> the program under the covers. Granted, observability doesn't store the
> actual RPG source code (or cobol, or MI, or...) but it does store the
> program template from which the "real" program is created, or 
> recreated,
> no? The template is in effect the real source code, and the compilers
> are simply translates from RPG, cobol, mi, etc. to the template.
> 
> Now, I do give Frank and the others great respect for knowing 
> enough to
> store the program template, and not rely on the "original" 
> source code.
> But is it really fair to say you're not recompiling the code? 
> 
> -Walden
> 

I suppose one could make this argument, since "compiling" is generally
accepted to mean converting to a binary format executable on the hardware.

On the other hand,  "compile" usually means from high-level source code.

So I think the answer is kinda, sorta, but not really ;-)

Charles