RE: What bugs you about KLISTs in RPG IV?

I work in retail (as you might imagine from the e-mail address) and our SKU
is composed of three separate fields.  It's been that way since the
beginning of time; the decision was made by a non-technical person.  I can't
count the number of programs we have that have an "abstract" klist based on
the three components of the sku, or even worse, a klist based on the names
of the sku components that are identical in five different files in the
program and not renamed.  F11 on the klist or chaining with an explicit key
would be a life saver for me.  I've uncovered bugs in 10 year old programs
resulting from duplicate field names.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Carol Bastien [mailto:cabastien@home.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 1999 11:32 PM
To: RPG400-L@midrange.com
Subject: Re: What bugs you about KLISTs in RPG IV?


Scott Klement wrote:

> Theres a very simple solution to the whole "debug a whole keylist"
> problem.   Just put all of your keys in a data structure somewhere,
> and debug THAT.
>
> Maybe I'm weird, but its only once in a blue moon that I need to
> debug a keylist, and hitting F11 (or typing eval varname) for 2 or 3
> different variables in a keylist doesn't bother me at all.  If it did,
> I'd make a data structure that contained all of my keys, just to make
> it easier to debug them.
>

Scott -   Have you ever had to support  users on a large software package
like J.D.Edwards,  CA/PRMS or the like.  One of the most common questions
you're ask is, 'Why dosen't something display on the screen or print out on
the report'.  That's when you open up the code on the  program, once you've
tracked the guilty one down, and you find out it's most definately a miss on
one of maybe 20 files all of which have compound keys . . . so after you
spend quite a bit of time figuring out what was in the parms required to
call
the program you finally get the baby up in debug.  Now you're at the fifth
key list and "F11ening" (new technical term!) on the 6 key fields for that
file . . . and you stop and think while chewing one recently abused
fingernail:  I'm almost lost here, or am I?  Should I start over, or try to
keep going 'cause maybe I'll get lucky?  Was that first field in that last
key list left justified, or was there a blank in front of the 1st character?
Yeh, maybe I should start over and first I'll just redefine all these keys
in
data structures so I can see them clearly . . . Oh but wait,  they're all in
Copy statements so I'll have to recompile first so I see what they are
suppose to be . . . That's when the phone rings and it's the controller
who's
waiting anxiously for the answer to the mystery.
    It's times like that when I'm wishing I could just F11 on the key list
and see answers instead of the "That does not compute" message. Trouble is,
the more flexibility the software vendors build into their packages, the
worse this situation gets.
    Anyway, that's why I want, need, require . . . dare I say demand the F11
"Show me the keys", and why they just MUST put back the ability for me (not
just the computer) to Watch a selected set of variables.   That's why I'm in
debug after all.
    Most sincerely - Carol


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