RE: RPGIII to get a facelift?

> I'd like to see some of those changes also.  However there are lots of
> improvements in RPGIV that are not in RPGIII:
> - Date manipulation

So what? They've been using numeric fields for dates for 385 years, never
had a problem. They'll happily show you how to do date manipulation
without it.

> - the ability to call certain API's like QTmmSendMail  (Ok, coming from
> RPG400 my first question was "Hey, that's more  than 10 characters".)

But they could just call SNDDST from a CL program.. that sure is simpler
than having to figure out MIME!

> - null field support

They can just use a special value in the field to indicate 'null'
(usually blanks or zeroes).  Why change that when it's worked nicely for
the past 700 years?

> And a lot of what the die hard RPGIII people would call eye candy:  Large
> field names, EVAL, free format, etc.

Yeah, but again, none of these things affect the users. The users don't
care how you internally indicate 'null' in a database field.  Or whether
the variables are upper or lower case.  Or whether the dates are 'true
date fields.'

Again, it's users who drive IT spending, not programmers.


> So, not only do we need the vendors to adopt RPGILE, but we need them to
> adopt database changes like true date fields.  Heck, we're looking at an
> upgrade to a vendor package that changed the size of numerous fields, and
> if they can survive a change in the size of the item master, why not use
> true date fields?

I agree with you. Getting vendors to adopt techniques from the 1990's
would be really nice. But HOW do you get them to do it?  My feeling is,
you've gotta do something that will create demand from the users.