RE: Adoption of RPG OA (Summary)

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2011 12:18 AM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i
Subject: Re: Adoption of RPG OA (Summary)

<snip>
A lot of your points are fine, but I just don't agree with this one. I
know EXACTLY what a CHAIN is doing - it's getting a set of fields from
the database. I know what it's doing, and I also know (roughly) how
long it's going to take. Perhaps most importantly I know that there are
zero side effects.
</snip>
You think you know exactly what a chain does ... and perhaps you are even correct about your assumptions but generally when something is done by the os or rdbms then it should be definitely considered a blackbox and one should read the API docs to know what to expect (in, out). Most people just assume too much.


<snip>
Take it for what it's worth. Call me a Luddite, but I just see OA as
potentially complicating one of the things in programming that is the
least complicated: a CHAIN to a database file. Personally, I don't need
a way to make a CHAIN act like a CALL when I have a perfectly good CALL
to do it for me.
</snip>
I 100% agree with you. A chain is a chain and should never have been abused as something like a proxy to a handler. They should have created something new like providing a serviceprogram with some procedures which do the proxying to the handlers (something like I am already doing in RNG Input Providers). But then again that would have missed their point/goal in providing something that RPG III developers can use without learning something new.

My 2 cents

Mihael