RE: ILE Conversion

[Jon.Paris@xxxxxx]

 >> Why write the file server in OPM RPG?  Because most of your customers
haven't upgraded to ILE machines and you don't want to force them to - its
bad for business to force customers to do things.

I have to take issue with a number of points arising from this and other
comments in your note.

First - you say they "Haven't upgraded to ILE machines"  You mean they are
running V2 releases?  I'm not sure I'd want to keep such customers anyway.
All V3 and later releases support ILE.

Second - If you RPG IV in compatibility mode then its behaviour is almost
identical to RPG/400 anyway.  The benefits of RPG IV over RPG III are so
overwhelming I can't believe that you have seriously looked at the language
at all.

Third - It is perfectly possible to write full ILE programs (making full
use of subprocedures etc.) that can co-habit with OPM programs without an
enormous amount of work.

Fourth - who said the "old" programs had to share the new IO routines
anyway?  They can stay as-is and be converted as/when they get re-written.

As to writing the thing in C - you're confusing me here.  The only C
compiler is an ILE one - you said earlier that you don't want to force your
customers to use ILE - am I missing something here?.  Anyway, all of the C
I/O routines can be used directly from RPG IV with no need for a C compiler
on the box (not a trivial expense at present) so for those occasions when
more flexibility than supplied by RPG is required you can go that way.
Besides - there is no need to produce a complete I/O system that can handle
any file/any format/ any operation - simply routines that put in one place
the operations required of a specific file/file set.


Last - but by no means least - I think we _should_ force our customers to
do things from time to time.  Shouldn't we encourage them to upgrade to
supported releases?  One BP I know recently informed their customer base
that they would have to move to a minimum V4R2 level to receive the new
release.  The customer's reaction (much to their surprise) was "Oh good -
we thought we should move but were waiting for you to tell us we needed
to!"

IMHO if you allow your customers to "rot" as you appear willing to do, then
they are easy targets for the NT "solution" advocates.  What happens to
your business then?



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