RE: re. Access Groups and Threads -- RPG400-L

> Can someone else that uses AG's comment on what John said 
> about using *new?

I'm beginning to get the impression that we're the only company in the
iSeries world using named AGs as they were designed to be used (as I
understand them).  Since I was the driving force behind our use of them,
that gives me a warm glow :-)  -- though at the same time, the same
sense of disappointment I get when I realise there are people who don't
use journalling and commitment control.

We sell a large banklng package which has many, many options from a menu
system.  A few years back my team worked on converting a number of the
major inputs to RPG IV and ILE (not just for the sake of it; we were
also changing them to take data from multiple sources, not just the
screen).

When we considered activation groups we realised that there were a
number of utility-type functions that users would need to access from
many different menu options (access to common files, like the customer
master, is a good example).  So we put the procedures that do those kind
of functions into service programs, which run in their own, named AGs.
These AGs are never reclaimed, so stay active until the user signs off.
Entry-point programs also  run each in their own named AG, but these are
reclaimed when the user exits back to the menu.

With hindsight the latter could have used *NEW AGs, but at the time I
avoided *NEW like the plague, because of an article I read in _News/400_
which questioned their worth because lots of AGs would be created and
never reclaimed.  The writer clearly didn't know about the limited
lifespan of *NEW AGs, and neither did I; and I must admit I didn't
investigate them further.

Our design seems to work satisfactorily, though we did have some
problems because of our hybrid ILE/OPM environment.  In particular when
an ILE program calls an OPM program which in turn calls another ILE
program.  If the first ILE program's AG is reclaimed on exit, them don't
expect a second call to it to be successful.  This can get very ugly.
(If anyone is interested I could post a document I wrote for our
intranet about this problem)

Cheers,

Martin.

--                                                                     
Martin McCallion                 
Midas-Kapiti International
Work:  mccallim@midas-kapiti.com
Home: martin.mccallion@ukonline.co.uk

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