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The boss's boss wants a quicker turnaround of projects, so much so that we
have been asked to look into other languages available on the AS/400 (EGL
is the first one and that might mean another thread in and of itself)
He is tired of having to wait to change/recompile ALL the applicable
programs for a change to a file, then having to push the appropriate people
off the system so that these changes can be applied to the files on the production system
----
A laudable motivation on his part for the project.
FYI and FWIW, sometimes I've considered what it would be like to have
externalized data access, like this. It could be done
==>One. Define the file itself first, and/or appropriate logicals.
==>Two. Write a service program with a global externally defined data
structure for reading the file into said data structure and/or writing
to the file from it.
==>Three. Procedures that receive parameters representing key values to
access these files using said externally described data structure(s).
This can be done with either RLA using RPG I/O opcodes or with SQL
statements, take your pick. %Parms can be used in this connection for
partial keys... To read, say:
Data1DS = File1( Key1: Key2: Key3: ) ---]
More subprocedures that simply return the current value for a given field:
P Field1 PR
D Field1 DS n
D Value 10a
/free
Value = Data1DS.Field1
Return Value
/end-free
==>Four.Use this approach --using calls to the service program
subprocedures-- in the programs that use the data from that file. Every
time.
==>Five. When you need to add a field to this format, the only thing you
have to change is the service program and recompile to use that file. If
you have library lists set up properly, I believe you can implement the
changed service program into production dynamically while other programs
that use it are running, as they are bound upon activation.
==>Six. This would require some consistent shop discipline and maybe
change management checks before promoting programs to production, but I
think it's doable. Situations like you describe are precisely why many
of us have considered this approach of externalizing data access this
way. I speculate that the main reason it isn't implemented more in shops
is just momentum.
--aec
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