Re: Send_File API versus Send API over a Socket

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