RE: RPG and SQL Compilers -- RPG400-L

>well there's Lou G<
What?  Nobody's in charge of the AS/iSeries/400/name/of/the/year?

As a relative SQL novice-newbie (recall some of my questions last month...),
it seems to me that, if it is IBM's desire to move the AS/400 world away from
DDS to SQL, as evidenced by news of support for new data types (functions?) in
SQL that will not be supported in DDS, then IBM has a responsibility to enable
full SQL support in RPG.

Frankly, given all the problems associated with the SQL precompiler that have
been reported here, IBM has given us little incentive to use SQL in our RPG
programs.

IM(uneducated)O.

Dan Bale
IT - AS/400
Handleman Company
248-362-4400  Ext. 4952

-------------------------- Original Message --------------------------

 >> In the short term, the best solution is to have the Big iSeries Boss
tell Rochester and Toronto to work together to make a uniform product.

It sounds like a good idea Buck but there are a few problems.

First of all there is no such person - well there's Lou G I guess but that
is how far up the tree you have to go to have the lines converge.

Second, all it does is ensure that they don't have the resource to do it
right.  The problem would just re-surface in the future.  Since it is SQL
that is behind, they would have to use almost as much resource just to
catch up (remember that there are _huge_ changes in the next release of
RPG) as they would to "do it right" and avoid these problems in the future.

 >> In the long term, I am missing how an internal compiler change affects
me, the application programmer.

I don't know either and nor will the developers until they work through the
process.  One example would be where folks currently "trap" the
pre-processor generated source and make changes to it prior to compilation.
Or perhaps use tools that work with the two listing files.  I know it
doesn't sound likely, but 10 years in compiler development taught me that
there is no bug/accidental behavior that you can introduce that won't be
treated as a feature by someone!!  Not only that but the "someone" in
question will be a large AS/400 customer and/or software vendor and will go
all the way to Lou to get things changed rather than take 15 minutes to
update his own software to avoid the problem.  Another example would be if
the new method required a slight difference in the way you coded the
embedded SQL.  For example I believe there is a structure that the
pre-processor inserts into RPG code but requires that you include it
specifically for COBOL.  hat if you had to include it "by hand" for RPG
also?

Other compatibility issues could include things like - does the new method
have to support RPG/400 or can the old version continue to be used for
that.
+---
| This is the RPG/400 Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to RPG400-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to RPG400-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to RPG400-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---