Can RPGLE simulate OO programming?

["Tom Tufankjian" <Tom_Tufankjian@xxxxxxxxx>]

Lately a question has been floating through my mind:  "Can RPGLE be used in
a way simulate object oriented programing?"

For example, can a service program act as an object and it's procedures be
methods?

In OO programming you don't pass parms all the time.  You call methods to
"set" or "get" values.  That is the "public interface".  So you can add
methods to the object without affecting the public that is using it.  As
opposed to using parms where if you add a new parm you change the public
interface and have to recompile calling programs even if they don't use the
new parms.

One problem is that procedure names cannot be qualified by service program
(I don't think).  So if you used two service programs that contained the
same procedure name, rpg would be confused.

 For example, let's say you had 2 objects:  UpdCustRec and UpdItemRec.  And
they both had a method "SetStatus".  In an OO language you would code:
UpdCustRec.SetStatus('A') and UpdItemRec.SetStatus('A') .  Can you simulate
this in rpgLE?

Sorry for being so long winded.  Any comments out there?


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