Re: Cases in AS400

["Bill Meecham" <bmeecham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Late jump for me too.  I use synon/cool/advantage/jasmin/allfusion 2e for a few 
applications and have used it for about 13 years now in different companies.  
2e, and other case tools have been practicing the theories behind what ILE is 
all about.  It provides a write once use many times environment.  In shops 
where the tool was used correctly, they can easily create objects with the 
business rules as program/entity repositories where one change in a business 
rule can be implemented in minutes.

I did consulting work on 2e code without a model and although somewhat 
difficult, depending on how the model was configured, it's easy to see that 
every possible error condition is checked and handled.  Error  checking to that 
level is not common in hand written code, nor is the consistency of the coding 
method that is used in the generated code. There may be redundancy in the code, 
depending again on configuration, but it's not in the model. 

In the model, I select functions that are already written from a list or create 
a new one on the fly.  You find yourself coding as you think.  One of the most 
important aspects is the normalization of files.  You can work in a model 
without files that are normalized but if you follow just some basic key 
structuring rules the model becomes much more powerful.

In the past case got a bad rap, not just from the code and size of objects but 
it was also called slow.  One place I worked, extol, had one of the fastest edi 
translator in the business and the system was primarily written in 2e.

So, larger but better code, more consistent, easier to find the pieces 
environment, response times that are equally as good, business logic and rules 
more likely to be defined in smaller units, faster coding time since most 
programs become a pick and chose rather than code and recode, faster testing 
since functions written once are already tested...I don't see how a case tool 
is a negative thing.  The only drawback is the learning curve.


bill
 
With apologies for jumping in late... I'd just like to take umbrage with 
the 
disparaging statements about generated code.