Re: (changes to a PF)

Hello Dieter

Yes I understand the power of SQL.  In my last 5 years I learnt a lot about SQL and totally agree with you.
In SQL I learnt enough to be able to do in one statement what I needed an entire RPG program to do AND to do it understandably, SQL can get as convoluted as C sometimes.

However there is a lot of RPG RLA about.
If only I had truly understood to
NEVER EVER use PF in RPG, use ONLY LF.
NEVER Ever allow LF to be defined without fields.
Never Ever change a LF, instead create a new LF if a change is needed.
Never Ever change a PF field attribute, instead create a new field at the end of the list of fields.

This is nowhere near the power of SQL,  but it would have been a step in the right direction, to decouple program logic from database structure.

I con only see the value of such a process in hindsight,  I was too stupid to understand when I was young.
It would have made my life a lot simpler, and my productivity double or more.
I was almost at a standstill at the end because I was so wary and fearful of database changes.

With SQL you still need an administrator who knows enough to check that the appropriate indexes exist,  SQL tells you this in the log information it provides.  Small price to pay.

Regards
Frank

Regards
Frank

On 15/08/2020 10:11 pm, D*B wrote:

<Frank>
WOW.  So simple.  After 30 years of RPG coding the PF trick NEVER occurred to me. WOW only ever use lgl files.    KISS, I am so stupid.
</Frank>

If you succeed to avoid RLA (SQL only access), you could enhance decoupling database implementation and programms. Using view only access, your programms don't need to know anything of your index design, you would use select * and fetch into external DS and update insert without fieldlists everywhere, with instead triggers you could even move fields around from one table to another. That's the real power of SQL (and not SQL DDL versus DDS or index size or which query engine is used or performance).

D*B