RE: Procedure names vs. production support -- RPG400-L

We ran into the same situation here.

My experience tells me that nor matter what YOU said or what kind of tool YOU 
present to help identify the service program, it is not going to be good 
enough.  Because that basic argument that you are facing is this "when a 
program blew up in the middle of the night, I don't want the on-call programmer 
to have to go thru all kind of hoops to research the problem".

Notice I said what YOU say or do is not good enough.  From experience, this is 
what I'll do:
1) Send in a formal request to management team for what you try to achieve.  Be 
sure to attach a few articles that written by well known experts that describe 
the advantages of using service program.  (This seems to be the best way to get 
management team to accept that service program is  good.  After all, who dares 
to argue with the expert.) 

2) If management team agreed that service program is good.  The next obstacle 
is probably the question about other programmers might not be able to support 
it.  In that case, request to have an expert on site to train other programmers 
on service program and other new programming techniques.  (We have Jon Paris 
and Susan done the training on site for us.  They were great. :)).

3) Buy a bottle of aspirin and take some when necessary.


Now, only if we can get Scott to present an article about the service program 
naming convention in the NEWS/400, ...


Good luck. 
 


-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces+lim.hock-chai=arch.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:rpg400-l-bounces+lim.hock-chai=arch.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf
Of Rick.Chevalier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 10:31 AM
To: rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Procedure names vs. production support



I'm trying to advance development in our shop to using procedures for specific 
business logic and combining them into service programs.  The issue I'm coming 
up against involves how to name the procedures.  If an error occurs in a 
production run the message will identify the procedure receiving the error, 
which may or may not be the name of the source member, causing confusion and 
delaying problem resolution.  I have listed the options I have come up with so 
far.

Option 1 is to give the procedures descriptive names so that developers can 
more easily identify what the procedure does.  For example, WrtPmtRec if the 
procedure writes a payment record.  This is the option I'm trying to sell but 
I'm having trouble coming up with a documentation method that would solve the 
production support issue.

Option 2 is to name the procedure the same as the actual source member 
(currently 1 procedure = 1 module = 1 source member) so that the person on call 
can more easily identify the source member of the procedure in error.  For 
example, the WrtPmtRec procedure would become SP4351M.  This is the counter 
proposal I have received.  It solves the production support issue but I think 
it will make development harder as the names have become cryptic.

Option 3 is to use descriptive names for both the procedure and the source 
member.  I like this one but over time I think we would run into naming 
conflicts with similar procedures.

I'd like to hear opinions on these options and how others on the list have 
resolved this situation in their environment.

TIA,

Rick


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