Re: IBM i "Open I/O" Architecture

Hi, Nathan:

Assuming these new features appear in RPG IV at, say, V6R2, some time next year, it will be several years before most vendors or ISVs can take advantage of them in their products, because most vendors or ISVs compile with TGTRLS(*PRV) or TGTRLS(V5R4M0) to continue to support their existing customers on those releases, for quite some time after the new version (e.g. V6R2) becomes available.

This does not prevent customers from using this new support as soon as it becomes available. It is mainly an issue for ISVs, who must support customers on at least the IBM supported versions of OS/400 and i5/OS, and many vendors also support at least one additional previous release (that IBM no longer supports).

It would be "really great" if the IBM RPG IV compiler team in ToroLabs could also make this support available (via PTFs) in V6R1 and V5R4. ;-)

Mark S. Waterbury

> Nathan Andelin wrote:

...(snip)...
It appears to me that Open I/O could signal a new level of cooperation between IBM and 3rd party vendors to extend RPG's reach to new devices and databases. If a file name, record name, and device type were passed to an Open I/O handler, along with an I/O buffer, then it would be possible for 3rd parties to write generic Open I/O handlers to implement various data management and device management operations while maintaining a familiar, streamlined, and consistent programming interface.

This topic has triggered a number of ideas about extending RPG's reach to other database platforms, and UI devices.

-Nathan.