Re: Adoption of RPG OA

Hi Sam,

<snip>
RPG OA came out with a bang a year ago, and several vendors announced
tools, some of which looked very good. But it seems to have been
relatively quiet since. (Not to disparage articles by several people on
the list and discussions here...)




But has there been any adoption of RPG OA and the 3rd party vendor
handlers and tools? Is there a market developing that will sustain the
vendors? Anyone actually using a 3rd party handler, or even installed
one for evaluation?

</snip>

We are currently 'evaluating'.

Regarding RPG OA: I can see some scenarios where it will be a useful tool. As an example, we built a simple PF containing address details (number, street, suburb, state, zip/postal code, country) and geo-coordinates (latitude, longitude). We then created two LFs - one keyed by address details the other keyed by lat, long. We then built a handler to go to maps.google and get the coordinates for the address or the address for the coordinates - depending on which LF we used. All done on a chain. Works a charm.
We are now looking at display files to see what OA offers us in this space.

Regarding use of Vendor products: The big-bang display conversion is just not going to happen here I think. I think there may be some things that would be beneficial - like a set of dummy PFs and handlers to allow the building/reading/ of excel spreadsheets as though they were F-specs:

PFs:
WORKBOOK
WORKSHEET
ROW
COLUMN
STYLE
etc...

Or the ability to easily print spreadsheets / word docs / PDFs / postscripts using an existing PRINTER file and handler.

There is a always another option - Time for us to put our opensource hats on! :-)

Cheers

Larry Ducie