RE: Activation groups for beginners

["Mackie, Roger L. (Precision Press)" <RLMackie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As a person relatively new to using ILE and activation groups, I can say
Buck's suggestion to use the 'QILE' named activation group works in our
shop. On our system we have very few file overrides, so the scoping behavior
does not bother us.

Since most of our programs run in the OPM activation group, the *NEW/*CALLER
scheme would require us to anticipate exactly how the programs will be
called. That is more work than putting DFTACTGRP(*NO) and BNDDIR('OURBIND')
in the H-specs of programs that use home-made ILE procedures. PDM and
CODE/400 compiler defaults do the rest for us. The defaults even put service
programs in the *CALLER activation group for us in case we choose to compile
mainline programs as *NEW or 'NOTQILE' in the future.

In my VERY humble opinion, if you don't do much with file overrides, find
activation groups confusing, and have to maintain a poorly designed legacy
system, the 'QILE' named activation group works fine. If you do deal with
file overrides and have well designed application entry points, Scott's
suggestion may be easier for you. Just be sure you follow his advice and
only use *NEW for the application entry point and *CALLER for everything
else.

Don't let activation group confusion scare you away from using ILE
techniques. Once you have some experience with service programs and the
productivity gains they can bring, I think you will find the effort to learn
ILE worth it--if only you can figure out what function(s) to put in that
first ILE module!

Roger Mackie

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Klement [mailto:klemscot@klements.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 3:56 PM
To: rpg400-l@midrange.com
Subject: Re: Activation groups for beginners

<snip>
What I was getting at is
that if you put all of your programs in QILE, and then scope the overrides
to the default *ACTGRPDFN, the override will affect any other programs
running in the QILE actgrp.

This is different than DFTACTGRP(*YES) because in that situation it goes
by call-level, and when that call level ends, so does the override.

This is why I think *NEW/*CALLER is easier for new people to understand.