Re: Describing RPG IV

Doug (OP),  
Who is the audience for this paragraph?


James,
The OP didn't specify the intended audience but, if the description is
for executive and/or non-technical management, you've put them to sleep
with the first sentence.  By the end of the second sentence, they're
comatose, and soon after that they're dead.  It'll be another example of
"Why can't you I.T. guys speak english?".

jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxx 02/12/2007 11:05:32 AM >>>

You seem to have pulled a "Dr. Watson" on this one, having 
missed nearly everything of significance that 
differentiates RPG from other languages.

How about:

RPG IV is the most current dialect of the RPG language, a 
high-level language that is very closely integrated with 
the native record-level database access on IBM midrange 
systems. It is unique in several respects, including a 
syntax totally dissimilar to that of any other high-level 
language (albeit modified somewhat with the "free" mode, 
largely derived from PL/I, that was recently added), the 
relative ease of calling external programs whose names are 
not known at compile-time, the extreme difficulty in 
accessing files whose names and structures are not known 
at compile-time, and a feature known as "The Cycle," an 
implicit do-while loop that can also have implicit read 
operations on one or more files. This "Cycle" can be tied 
to a designated "primary file," in which case the program 
implicitly reads each record of this file (and possibly 
also from one or more designated "secondary files"), and 
executes once for each primary file record, or it can be 
terminated by explicitly setting on a built-in logical 
variable, the "LR Indicator," to indicate that the program 
is to terminate. An RPG program can also be terminated, 
but left active, with its static variables preserved until 
the next time it is called, by explicitly RETURNing to the 
calling program without setting this "LR Indicator." 
Unlike earlier dialects of RPG, RPG IV is a part of IBM's 
Integrated Language Environment, a system of mutually 
compatible compilers in multiple languages. This allows a 
mixed-language application including RPG code to be 
statically linked into a single program, which can then 
execute much more quickly than an application that is 
constantly making external calls between multiple 
programs.

--
JHHL