Re: Death of RPG38 and RPG36 -and- more!

[Jerry Adams <jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was looking forward to the demise.  About 70% of our code is RPG II 
(and OCL) ported from a /36 and originally written on a /34.  It was 
100% until I started here almost three (3) years ago.


The withdrawal would have given me some leverage to spend some money (a 
hard thing to do here) on a tool to convert the code and OCL.  It can be 
done by hand, but it's certainly labor intensive doing it that way.


On the other hand IBM may have calculated (pure speculation on my part) 
that it would have given some customers the impetus to finally check out 
other alternatives whether those be ASNA or even Oracle or other SQL 
server.  They may, also, have speculated that it would cause some 
customers to simply "freeze" their systems at the last viable release.  
My guess is that, rather than spend money, we would have fallen into 
that last category here.


I can't see maintaining the /36 and /38 compilers being a financial 
drain.  My guess is that there is absolutely no work being done on 
either, but Barbara could address with more authority than I.  The 
environments, on the other hand, probably do require some tweaking from 
time-to-time.


        * Jerry C. Adams
*IBM System i Programmer/Analyst
B&W Wholesale Distributors, Inc.* *
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        615.995.7024
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        jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>



Jim Franz wrote:

> like officevision, which ibm extended at least once, but ibm has certainly
> put the 1st nail in the coffin....at let shops know what's coming. I 
> imagine,
> till some shops woke up and checked, IBM had no real idea how many
> still run the old stuff.
> jim
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Barbara Morris" <bmorris@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 12:36 PM
> Subject: Re: Death of RPG38 and RPG36 -and- more!
>
>
> rob@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>  
>
> > ...
> > Quoting from the article:
> > "First up, IBM says that WebSphere Development Studio for iSeries V5R4
> > will be the last release to ship with RPG II and COBOL compilers that are
> > compatible with the System/36 and RPG III and COBOL compilers that are
> > compatible with the System/38. ...
> >    
>
> IBM has withdrawn the planning statement about withdrawing support for
> the 36- and 38-compatible RPG and COBOL compilers.  If I recall this
> thread correctly, this is probably good news for some and bad news for
> others on this list :)
>
> http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/support/iseries/planning/upgrade/v5r4/planstmts.html
>
>   RPG and COBOL System/36T and System/38T compatible compilers, July
> 2006
>
>   IBM plans to continue to ship and support the following S/36 and S/38
> compiler
>   options as part of WebSphere Development Studio for iSeries in the
> release after
>   V5R4. IBM is withdrawing the previous planning statement that said
> V5R4 will
>   be the final release to include these compilers in the Software
> Maintenance or
>   Software Subscription contract.
>      5722-WDS Option 32 - System/36 Compatible RPG II
>      5722-WDS Option 33 - System/38 Compatible RPG III
>      5722-WDS Option 42 - System/36 Compatible COBOL
>      5722-WDS Option 43 - System/38 Compatible COBOL
>
>