Jon,
Is this politics at play? It seems to me that everyone is dissatisfied with the results. The WDS developers cannot make the tools work right, and the DB2 group can't expose new features in SQL syntax, and we're stuck with this mangled mess, all because of this flawed architecture. IBM tells us that SQL is the strategic choice for database access, yet they make it difficult to use in our development projects. IBM's application modernization strategy is clearly oriented on SQL, and I have certainly moved in that direction, but it hardly feels like an integrated solution....
Budget? Sure, I understand that $$$ must come into play, but right now, the budget is split between the WDS and DB2 groups to support the use of embedded SQL. Surely the $$$ spent by the DB2 group on the pre-processor could go straight to the WDS group. Ok, those budgeted dollars are currently just designated for product support, and would be insufficient for the development effort required, but once the rewrite is complete, the maintenance costs should decrease significantly, as there will no longer be multiple groups to spend that dough.....
RPG V? I remember some obliquely worded posts a while back (year ago?) that seemed to indicate that there MIGHT be a new compiler in the works. Of course, this was complete heresay, but if there's any work being done there, then that could certainly be a means of bypassing the pre-compiler.....
Oh well, I suspect I shall have to remain disapointed with IBM on this one....
Regards,
Eric DeLong
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Jon Paris
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 11:06 AM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: The real problem with the SQL precompilers (was SQL on
AS400...)
I agree with your assessment. I know IBM has made some improvements
to the pre-compiler (thanks Gina!), but this disconnect still bites
us all the time. WDSC (RDi) falls over when reviewing compiler
errors, debugging is ugly, x-ref and outline features are
incomplete, etc..... IBM needs to eliminate this asap. Seems to be
in IBM's best interest to make their tools usable, without the work-
arounds that we currently are stuck with. IBM should find this
situation embarrassing.
I think the opportunity has already been missed.
When they were contemplating making the changes that we have recently
seen (and I agree that Gina did good work) they had the opportunity to
throw it all away and start over and do it properly. They chose
instead to put more chewing gum and baler twine on an already flawed
approach. We can't blame Gina for that - she wasn't responsible for
the architectural decisions. I suspect that budget (both in Toronto
and Rochester) was the ultimate stumbling block.
The ridiculous aspect of this is that the compiler on which RPG IV was
based already used the "compiler in charge" approach and it had to be
disabled for the ILE implementation. The result of course is that the
pre-compiler is almost doomed to be forever behind the compiler as it
always has to be updated whenever the compiler changes. That's
constant duplication of effort which could have been avoided with a re-
write.
Jon Paris
www.Partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com
midrange.com
