Re: Beginning modules, procedures, and service programs.

Booth you may be surprised by the response but - "It all depends"

This is my opinion, others may have a different opinion.

We use service programs to group like functions. Write it once and use it
in many places.

As an example we have a service program for date manipulation which has 40
odd procedures to do anything we need with a date.

We have others for email functions, getEmailAddress, validateEmailAddress,
sendEmail, etcetera.

You mention help functions, yes we have one for all the help option.

But generally processes are program(s) so a table maintenance program
would most likely be a single program but it will call the help procedures
from the help service program and the date validation procedures from the
date service program and so on.

We had a contractor write an application where he had one service program
for all the F4=List / F4=Prompt options which I quite liked - getCompany,
getLocation, getClass, ...

So it comes down to the situation you are in - if you are writing a new
application then design the service program(s) and the procedures they
will provide, if maintaining an existing application then this is harder
as cost comes into play but if code that is duplicated in many program can
be removed to a service program procedure and that duplication replaced
with a call to the procedure the benefits can outweigh the cost.

That's my brief 2 cents worth.

Cheers


Don Brown


"MIDRANGE-L" <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote on 21/01/2019
07:14:52 AM:

From: "Booth Martin" <booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 21/01/2019 07:14 AM
Subject: Beginning modules, procedures, and service programs.
Sent by: "MIDRANGE-L" <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

I finally decided to move towards the 21st Century. The whole idea of
prototypes, modules, service programs, and ILE concepts has been a
curiosity to me and avoided by me. But no more. I have been reading
articles, looking at examples, and working with service programs. It
still bewilders me

May I say back what I think I have learned, with the idea that I
probably got much of it wrong? I am barely past Hello World, and much
of what I read is targeted to a level somewhere above that. I need to
get my basics right. (I appreciate the patience and the talent here o
Midrange.com)'

Typically I have made a series of small programs to do the various
activities needed for an application. There would be a program to
create the file(s) needed for the application, the program to edit those

files, program(s) to communicate the data to & from users, ancillary
programs for F1-Help, F4-Prompt, etc., and the display files to go with
all of that.

If I understand correctly, the programs and their display files would
now become modules? A service program would be written to combine
those new modules? There would be another service program for the
wider-scope activities, like default values, message files, and
communications applications.

At that point every thing starts to fall apart in my head. So let me
offer a simple situation and ask what pieces should I create for that
situation:

NameFile, with name, street, city, state, zip, phone, and email. I need
to create the file, edit the file (including a default for message file
for language-to-use, dropdown (F4) on state, and an F1 key for
system-wide Help defaulting to NameFile help). I also want to provide
F4 screens for name, city, & state so other applications can plug in
dropdowns for valid name, city, & Sates for their own applications
needing name & address info.


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