RE: Activation groups for beginners

I understand it's a bad thing to do and we are slowly cleaning them up.
What I don't quite understand is what bad things is it doing when the joblog
shows that no activation groups were in fact reclaimed.  Or, could the
message be wrong and something was reclaimed that didn't trigger the counter
shown in the joblog?  I suspect that something more than activation groups
are being reclaimed when *eligible is used.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Buck Calabro [SMTP:Buck.Calabro@commsoft.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 2:44 PM
> To:   rpg400-l@midrange.com
> Subject:      RE: Activation groups for beginners
>
> Nelson Smith wrote:
>
> >Question on an odd observation about the RCLACTGRP command:
> >
> >Here in this shop, we have hundreds of legacy CL OPM driver
> >type programs that all have RCLACTGRP *ELIGIBLE at the end
> >as part of their cleanup routine.  We have had many problems
> >with MCH3402 errors and "object not found in stack", etc.
> >and removing this command has solved most of them.
>
> That's roughly analogous to flipping the circuit breaker on the computer
> room to end a running program.  This says in effect, "wipe out all the
> storage you can get your hands on."  Generally, only a very few programs
> should use this - things like menu programs.
>
> GLMENU
>  01 - Chart of accounts
>  02 - Balance sheet
>  ...
> ARMENU
>  01 - Customer inq
>  02 - ATB
>  ...
>
> >The odd thing I notice, however, when reviewing the
> >joblogs, is that on many such crashes, the joblog
> >will say "0 Activation Groups reclaimed".  Does the
> >command affect anything other than activation groups?
>
> Not that I know of.  Here's the CL Reference:
> http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/pubs/html/as400/v5r1/ic2924/info/cl/rclactgr
> .h
> tm
>
> >How is it possible, that removing the command fixes
> >the problem if no activation groups were
> >reclaimed in the first place?
>
> This is perhaps THE hairy part of ILE.  Errors may not show up until later
> because wiping out storage NOW doesn't do anything until the next time the
> program runs.  Remember that activation (initialising storage, etc.) is
> different from running.  A program is activated once per AG, including
> *DAG.
>
> Perhaps if you posted a bit more about the application... Are the ILE
> programs running in *DAG?  QILE?  *NEW?  Why was it decided to do a
> RCLACTGRP *ELIGIBLE in the CL programs?
>   --buck
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