Re: What are the benefits of ILE?

[James David Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, James W. Kilgore wrote:

> IMHO, the purpose of ILE was not to replace /COPY or callable programs.  The
> machines have gotten faster so the performance hit on a CALL becomes a moot

See my previous message for an example where this is simply not true.

> point.  AFAIK, the purpose of ILE is in file scopeing. Overrides and ODP's and
> commitment control and all that.

No no no no!  That is only a part of ILE (and IMHO a very small part).
ILE provides a _clean_ and well structured interface to building blocks of
applications.  And those building blocks don't even need to be of the same
language!  RPG's strengths are the cycle (if you like the cycle) and
database file access (read, write, update, chain).  Other languages do
other tasks much better than RPG (the current thread on finding and
deleting files in the IFS is only one example that shows a task for which
RPG is poorly suited).

OPM calls are basically just calling a program from the command line.
There is no way to verify that the parameters passed are anything close to
what is needed.  How many times have people on this list had problems
passing numeric data to an OPM program?  Is it packed or isn't it?  ILE
provides a sane method for passing data from code block to the next.

And let's not forget variable scope.  How often do you need to check that
a bit of code that has been /COPY'ed into a program doesn't mess with
variables already used by that program?  RPG's all-variables-are-global
method is awful bordering on insane.  With ILE the only variables that can
be modified are declared globals (fields in files) and those that are
passed, with the ability to not modify even the passed ones.  So you can
change only what you need to without worrying about your other variables
getting screwed with.  With an OPM called program this obviously isn't an
issue - see previous paragraph why OPM still sucks.

> IMNSHO ILE is not for the masses but the chosen few.

Perhaps it took the chosen few to make changes that benefit the masses?

James Rich
james@eaerich.com

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