RE: CF-Spec - another call for opinions

["McCallion, Martin" <MccalliM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Doug Handy said:

> Bob,
> 
> >Oh wait, you won't have to worry about it, because
> >software vendors will NEVER use the CF spec because it is 
> not backwardly
> >compatible!
> 
> Are you suggesting that software vendors will NEVER use anything that
> can't compile under V3R2?  (Or did you mean even older than that,
> which would cut out even subprocedures, etc.)

I took Bob's comments as ironic.  But in fact, software vendors like
ourselves _do_ have to consider backwards compatibility issues when
using new functions.  We have customers on all sorts of strange old
releases of OS/400.  We tend to take the approach of lagging six months
behind IBM.  By which I mean, we support our current release on version
x of OS/400 up till six months after IBM drop support for it.  Similarly
development of our next release must take account of IBM support dates.

This does mean we can't use newer features in our mainstream
applications until they've been around for some time.  Which is
frustrating for developers like me, but we have to look after our
customers (IMO we don't have to look after them _that_ much, but that
_is_ only my opinion).

We currently compile everything TGTRLS(V3R2M0).  For our next release --
ah, but that's still "company confidential", so I'll let you guess.

Fortunately there are always in-house utilities to write, which don't
have the same restrictions.

Martin.

--                                                                     
Martin McCallion                 
Midas-Kapiti International
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Home: martin.mccallion@ukonline.co.uk

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