Re: ILE Service Program best practices

[Simon Coulter <shc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 16/11/2004, at 7:56 AM, Mike Eovino wrote:

> Service Program A was made from Module A and contains subprocedures 1 
> and 2
> Service Program B was made from Module B and contains subprocedures 3 
> and 4
> Subprocedure 2 calls subprocedure 3
> Subprocedure 4 calls subprocedure 1

stuff deleted

> Each service program is dependent upon the other.
>
> We can fake this out by moving the existing objects over as well, but
> this raised an interesting question:  How do we keep this from
> happening in the future?

Better design? That's meant seriously. What is the purpose of service 
program A and B. Should the functions they export really be in the same 
service program (e.g., all string stuff, or all Accounts Receivable 
stuff)?

> The only thing we can think of is to limit service programs to a
> single subprocedure, but is this really something we want to do?

You can create one service program and specify OPTION(*UNRSLVREF) then 
create the other. Once the second one is created recreate the first one 
without specifying unresolved references.

This is the method I use to handle the following example in my own code:
My MATH service program uses my MSG service program which uses my STG 
service program which uses my MATH service program. The only way to 
avoid this cyclic dependency is to either:
	a) Duplicate function (either by /COPY, cloning, or writing 
differently)
	b) Artificially separate the MATH function need by STG into a separate 
service program

Neither of which I find palatable. The code is separated by functional 
group and that i show it should stay because it makes using the service 
programs easier. To get the ease of use I pay a price of slightly messy 
creation.


Regards,
Simon Coulter.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
   FlyByNight Software         AS/400 Technical Specialists

   http://www.flybynight.com.au/
   Phone: +61 3 9419 0175   Mobile: +61 0411 091 400        /"\
   Fax:   +61 3 9419 0175                                   \ /
                                                             X
                 ASCII Ribbon campaign against HTML E-Mail  / \
--------------------------------------------------------------------