RE: Activation groups for beginners

[Buck Calabro <Buck.Calabro@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Here's a point of confusion -- if an AG is a
>subdivision of a job, then why is it necessary
>to avoid naming conflicts with AG's in other
>applications when using NAG's?

Good question!
When I said 'application' I meant in the sense of the same person running
General Ledger and Accounts Payable in the same job, as opposed to one job
running GL and another running A/P.  If your design is such that you want
the G/L system to share open files and variables with the A/P system then
you want *NEW/*CALLER - you WANT the system to put them all in a single AG.
The menu creates a *NEW and every other program, whether G/L or A/P is
*CALLER, so they use the same AG.

If your design is such that G/L must NOT share open files, etc. with A/P
then you need to be sure that the G/L programs run in a programmer-named AG
that is different from the AG that the A/P programs use.  SO it may seem
logical to compile all the G/L programs to be ACTGRP('GL') and the A/P
programs to be ACTGRP('AP')

But what happens when your company buys an A/P package that needs to be
independent of BOTH of your home-grown systems?  What if the vendor of that
package chose ACTGRP('AP')?  You have to re-compile all of your home-grown
A/P programs so they don't overlap with the vendor's.  This isn't as
far-fetched as it sounds.  I've seen file name VENDOR used by several
commercial applications - you generally don't want to share an ODP across
different commercial packages...

Recap: AG name 'collision' can occur between programs running in the same
job if the programs inadvertently share the AG name.
  --buck