RE: Catch 'n release MONITOR'd message -- RPG400-L

<snip>
I'm not familiar with MSF.   I was suggesting that it write the mail via
the SMTP protocol to a SMTP server.   If you need to do mail using other
protocols, then my ideas probably won't work.   I guess I just assume
everyone is using internet standard mail.
</snip>

You don't want to be familiar with MSF :-)  I guess I would view that as a
fairly hardy project to build an RPG utility that adhered to the W3 SMTP
standard; hey, let's use JavaMail. 

>I also don't use the AS/400 as my SMTP server.  It's just not what the
AS/400 is good at :)  
I agree :-)  Although there may be a good Java SMTP server you could install
on your 400 under Tomcat <VBG>

>Huh?  Why would you write software that has restrictions that you don't
want?  I'm suggesting writing it yourself, not using an existing package!
I am talking about other email software that I have used that finally drove
me to write my own email tools so I didn't have limitations.  

>But, that parser isn't available. :)  I've tried to install it!
Hmmm. . . that's funny.  I don't recall any of your installation problems
being posted to the Installation forum on sourceforge
(http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=286508).  Just kidding :-)
Seriously, if you are having trouble installing it, I am just an email away
(aaronbartell@xxxxxxxxx).  Also, the latest version, with a full install
program, can be downloaded from my site
http://mowyourlawn.com/files/rpg-xml-parser%20(full).zip.

<snip>
But, as far as writing statements like:
          Email_MsgFrom('klemscot@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx');
          Email_AddRecipient('aaron@xxxxxxxxxx');
          Email_AddRecipient('rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx');
          Email_Subject('Fun with salt shakers');
          Email_BodyFile('/tmp/bigbody.txt');
          Email_Attach('/tmp/happyboy.gif': 'IMAGE/GIF');
          Email_Attach('/tmp/sillyreport.xls': 'APPLICATION/VND.MS-EXCEL');
          if (Email_Send('smtp.klements.com') < 0);
             SndEscape(Email_Error);
          endif;
I don't see why there'd be scalability issues there. 
</snip>

For one, I want RPG to advance faster as a language.  Shouldn't I be able to
easily throw an error and have the MONITOR statement catch it?  Shouldn't I
be able to use ALIAS'd file field names in my RPG?  Shouldn't I have dynamic
arrays?  The list goes on and on of things that make the language hard to
use, and even harder when you try to get into anything that has to do with
XML.  I am sure Hans and Barbara (those are the only two I know) do quite
well with what IBM gives them for resources, I just wish IBM would take RPG
more seriously.

My comment about scalability leans more towards my first effort of making an
RPG interface to a Java Servlet running on Tomcat with XML as the transport.
I'll be darned if it is easy to make an application that can handle all
loads of different repeatable data segments in RPG.  It just doesn't fare to
well.  First you hit the roof if you try to store large amounts of data in a
variable (32K or 65K).  Once you realize those are too small for a "robust"
app you go looking for other things like User Spaces and temp files in the
IFS.  If you store info in the IFS (which can be huge amounts and you are
not really limited), you eventually need to bring that back into an RPG
program which has strapped variables like I previously mentioned.  This
isn't a problem if you can stream (in large chunks) your IFS file to the
service of choice, but if you have 3rd party code that didn't think a data
stream should ever be over 32K/65K then you have to deal with those
limitations.  You can definitely make it work, but the motions you go
through to make it work take way too much time, and your failure points
multiply.  I am not a top notch RPG programmer, so maybe that is where some
of my comments come from.  

<snip>
If you're so keen
to do your e-mail in Java, then why are you writing an RPG interface for
it?  It seems to me that your major problems is that you're mixing both
RPG and Java.   Do it purely in Java if you want Java.
</snip>

So I can send emails from RPG programs.  RPG is still the main stay in our
shop, and I don't see it leaving anytime soon.  Programmers can pound out
business code like crazy with RPG (which is where RPG serves its master
well).  

Case in point, you could build your own RPG routines to compose Excel
documents, but why would you when you could interface with solid Java code
like POI(http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/).  Lane McBride (on this list) took
the Java POI classes and put an RPG interface on it, and now we have
RPG-only programmers dynamically creating Excel spread sheets, and doing it
with relative ease.  Now how long do you think it would have taken to build
that with RPG?  3 months, 6 months, 1 year?  and would it be sufficient even
then?

My opinion is that too many times we use RPG as the wrong tool for the job,
or we try to re-create the wheel.  RPGMail is my 4th iteration of trying to
get emails to work on the iSeries, and I think I finally have something that
will work good.  And that is because I finally released RPG from having to
do it from the ground up.

Those are just my opinions on the matter.

Aaron Bartell










-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Klement [mailto:klemscot@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 6:25 PM
To: RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: RE: Catch 'n release MONITOR'd message




On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Bartell, Aaron L. (TC) wrote:
>
> What are you talking about?  The Java portion?  I wrote it in Java because
> whenever we rely on MSF (Mail Server Framework) it blows up and we end up
> restarting it without retaining the existing queue entries (or whatever
they
> are called), which means we lose all of the emails that are waiting to be
> sent out.  We have 25+ iSeries machines that we support and MSF became
such
> a problem that we had to find a different way to send out email.

I'm not familiar with MSF.   I was suggesting that it write the mail via
the SMTP protocol to a SMTP server.   If you need to do mail using other
protocols, then my ideas probably won't work.   I guess I just assume
everyone is using internet standard mail.

I also don't use the AS/400 as my SMTP server.  It's just not what the
AS/400 is good at :)   But that's not really relevant, a program can be
made configurable so that it talks to any SMTP server, whether it's on the
LAN or Internet or local machine is just a matter of specifying a
different address.

> Also, I don't have to deal with all of the restrictions that other
software
> out there has (limited attachments, limited recipients, etc).  I already
> knew Java, and the JavaMail API's do all the hard work for you.

Huh?  Why would you write software that has restrictions that you don't
want?  I'm suggesting writing it yourself, not using an existing package!

> Besides, RPG doesn't scale well for these types of things, IMO.  Like the
> RPG XML parser I just got done writing; I wouldn't recommend parsing XML
in
> RPG, but if you don't have any other options, that parser is available and
> works good.

But, that parser isn't available. :)  I've tried to install it!

But, as far as writing statements like:

          Email_MsgFrom('klemscot@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx');
          Email_AddRecipient('aaron@xxxxxxxxxx');
          Email_AddRecipient('rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx');
          Email_Subject('Fun with salt shakers');
          Email_BodyFile('/tmp/bigbody.txt');
          Email_Attach('/tmp/happyboy.gif': 'IMAGE/GIF');
          Email_Attach('/tmp/sillyreport.xls': 'APPLICATION/VND.MS-EXCEL');
          if (Email_Send('smtp.klements.com') < 0);
             SndEscape(Email_Error);
          endif;

I don't see why there'd be scalability issues there.  If you're so keen
to do your e-mail in Java, then why are you writing an RPG interface for
it?  It seems to me that your major problems is that you're mixing both
RPG and Java.   Do it purely in Java if you want Java.

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