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We have both types of programs in our shop, and for us, service programs
are now falling out of favor. Faster development and efforts in
testability are our primary concern.

I understand the push by IBM and others toward Binding directories and
Service Programs. Yes, they are efficient.

But for the programming behavior, where you are retrofitting and keeping
the behavior consistent, it is extremely hard. Managing binding is an
added level of complexity that we do not see advantages to, and our
users see little value in us addressing. (The ongoing "technical debt"
of retrofitting and changing working programs is not something the user
community wants to pay for now.)

Because of good design and no copied code, where we have our functions
are NOT defined in multiple places, but in one place only, we really do
not care if it is invoked as an EXTPGM or within Service Programs. Not
when response time is sufficient.

Is there a response time problem with your applications? Can you see a
payoff in re-wiring them differently? I believe you are taking on short
term risk for little payback later.

But the real question I think you should be asking is, Do the new and
existing applications have automated tests to ensure code is written to
match requirements? And tests to prove the change did no harm, that we
can prove anything we change is behaving the same way? The failure to
build these regression tests into system i code keeps us out of the
Agile movement and from any true improvements in our codebase. Until we
change our programming habits in this way, it is all window dressing.

In summary, I feel IBM and others push too hard into the area of binding
and put too little effort into the area of testability.

I am yet to be convinced that they are a "drastic" improvements from
the plain old modular programming practices we institute, in the sense
that as long as we have one program to handle one thing, and we have
automated tests in place that prove the functionality again and again,
we should be modify or refactor it without tests.

So I too would be interested to hear about the experience and ROI that
rewriting and/or re-wiring the application gives you. I would love to
be proved wrong.


from: David FOXWELL <David.FOXWELL@xxxxxxxxx>

Jerry, I'd like to hear how you get on, it seems like we are just a step behind you.

Birgitta,
I'd be very worried about converting everything at once.
After having changed from 1 big bound pgm to one smaller pgm bound to several srvpgm, won't there be differences in behaviour?
What about things like Static variables, files staying open, etc?

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