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Well,

I'm not - again and again - going into this discussion.

I'm asking you, why is RPG a GOOD language.
First question, of course: what makes a good language?
Especially, what makes a good business language.
I'm not going to answer that, because i already had lots of discussion about
it.

I have a problem with everybody saying that it's a good language.
Why???
Because it has RLA, chain and the like??
It's not a language feature, it's a platform feature.
Like with support for decimals, like COBOL, RPG supports decimals because it
evolved around a business platform.
Now it's a good thing RPG has decimals, and a bad thing Java has not (not
counting the Decimal class).
But these are not language features.

I suppose then RPG was also a good business language in the 90's (or is it a
good or even the best language since 10 years??).
How can a business language be any good if it doesn't even support dates
(and i don't mean 8-digit decimals).
This is where i have a problem.

















On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 4:48 PM, Jerry C. Adams <midrange@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

I'm not nearly as well versed in these things as you and Joe, but why would
one consider RPG (and here I'm assuming ILE RPG) to be an Achilles' Heel?
An Achilles' Heel is a weak point (usually a fatal one). Just because it's
tied so closely to the system (using, I think, the system's data management
routines among other things) shouldn't be cause for alarm. As Joe and
JHHL,
among others, have pointed out it always helps to be multilingual. Makes
me
wish I hadn't given up on C those many years ago.

RPG is not a fatal flaw - in my opinion - as long as Toronto keeps growing
it. Which they seem intent upon doing.

Jerry C. Adams
IBM i Programmer/Analyst
I think that the free-enterprise system is absolutely too important to be
left to the voluntary action of the market place. - Congressman Richard
Kelly (FL)
--
A&K Wholesale
Murfreesboro, TN
615-867-5070


-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of john e
Sent: Monday, July 11, 2011 9:21 AM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i
Subject: Re: RPG - I'm not dead yet!

Joe,

Ok, i didn't know that. An array defined as 3u0 is the trick. Thanks!
In my - rather limited - experience with RPG-to-Java, if a pass a character
field to Java to a byte-array it gets translated, which is not correct as
you already stated. Apparently, the compiler "sees" it's a normal field
(and
not a 3u0 field) and thus handles it as text.


Charles,
Ok, i didn't know that either, although, now you stated it, i knew or did
know (forgotten/biased?) that the JVM was implemented below SLIC, not above
which would be indeed very inefficient.


Maybe i'm a bit too harsh on OS/400, it is indeed - these days - a very
versatile platform.
Anyway, although i'm quite critical, i AM a fan of OS/400, the platform.
I'm just not a fan of RPG, and think it is the achillesheel of OS/400
development.







On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Joe Pluta
<joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

On 7/11/2011 8:14 AM, john e wrote:
And... i know it will never, ever, be fixed, because nobody will
complain.
Maybe you, me, a couple others on this thread, but the "audience"is
just
tooo very small for IBM.
We just have to be thankful that there is something like RPG/Java
integration.


On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 3:10 PM, john e<whattssonn@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Joe,

I have one problem with RPG and Java integration however, a bit
off-topic,
but anyway. An alphanumeric field in RPG seems to be always translated
to a
byte-array, instead of a String. Then, RPG to Java support always
assumes
the field contains text, and thus always translates the contents to
UTF-16.
This is not correct. When just want to pass a field with bytes i can't
do
that, because it gets translated. The other way around would be
better,
never translate it automatically, and when it contains text i can
(manually
by invoking a routine) translate ebcdic to utf-16 and pass that. This
is
one
example of integration, which is ok, but still causing headaches
because
of
the "different" (i.e. ecbdic etc) nature of it. This always
translating
alpha fields to byte-arrays (not Strings but byte-arrays) is not
correct. It
seems like it wasn't well thought out.

This simply isn't true. If you want to pass untranslated data, pass it
as an array of 3u0. I do it all the time and it works perfectly. But
regardless, a character field is most definitely NOT a string! It is an
array of character data. You pass the data to Java, and then create a
string from those bytes, and that's Java's job. You can also do it in
your RPG program by calling the appropriate String method.

Personally, I think the integration of String and RPG CCSID is actually
very good.


Developing on the AS/400 and integrating with the rest of the world
always
seems problematic. With or without first-class support for JNI (which
RPG
has and is rather unique but.... doesn't work without hassles, again!)

And from my standpoint, the IBM i is the most open platform available
and talks to just about everybody. You can access it via web service or
ODBC or even direct calls to ILE through the Java toolbox. Few
platforms provide anything like the connectivity of the i.

Joe
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