Re: Send_File API versus Send API over a Socket

[Scott Klement <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Walden,

I agree with your opinion that it doesn't make sense to write your own 
proprietary file transfer protocol when there are so many good ones 
already available.  Why re-invent the wheel?

Having said that, there are situations (albeit, rare ones) where 
something custom designed makes sense.  FTP, NFS and SMB (and SFTP as 
well) are NOT program-to-program communications, they're "program to 
file system" communications which are not suitable in many cases.  HTTP 
does offer a nice option for program to program -- but the stateless 
nature isn't suitable for every purpose under the sun.  So there are 
rare occasions where it makes sense to design you own tool.

I TOTALLY disagree with your assessment that RPG is a bad language to do 
system-level stuff.  Although it wasn't really designed for it, todays 
RPG language is a great language for some kinds of lower-level 
programming.  I'm sorry, but C requires too much work to get the job 
done a lot of the time, and RPG is certainly more suitable to system 
level stuff than Cobol, CL, Java, or PHP.

On that score, I come from a position of experience... i write a lot of 
lower-level stuff in both RPG and C, and I find RPG easier.  Granted, I 
don't go all the way down to the hardware level, but neither is Shannon 
in this situation...



Walden H. Leverich wrote:
> Shannon,
>
> "custom code", "because my manager said so" and all that jazz aside, you
> realize you're attempting to re-write some very basic file handing code
> in a language that wasn't designed to do system-level stuff, right? 
>
> Given that you can use FTP, NFS, HTTP, SMB, and probably 7 or 8 other
> existing, coded, tested, trusted protocols for transferring a file
> between two machines, why the heck would you even consider writing your
> own?
>
> Seriously!? Not trying to be a pain.
>
> -Walden