Re: RPG III (RPG/400)

Yeah, I can agree with that - guess I'm feeling the lumps and bruises of trying to turn O-specs with ADD and DEL modifiers into fully-free! Ouch!! #@$%!%! Even making a new program to do what a really old one does, and trying to convert a copy of the old one - sheesh!!!

I TRIED! REALLY I DID!

On 10/22/2015 8:52 AM, Jon Paris wrote:

If you want to make that argument for RPG II Vern I’ll agree. But RPG/400 and RPG IV are so compatible that in my opinion any vendor who has not at least switched to RPG IV syntax is taking your maintenance money under false pretences - and Yes - I do include JDE in that category.

On Oct 22, 2015, at 8:39 AM, Vernon Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I think that a major consideration when updating RPG III or even RPG II code in a product is ROI - it can be a considerable cost to change everything. We are not encouraged to do that in our own code base, right?

Do we want vendors to spend precious (our maintenance) dollars on updating code to more current format, just to do it? I certainly don't - there had better be a better justification than that for me to pay for it.

If something does work well (measured by whatever you consider important), leave it alone. If it will break in a new release, update it to RPG-latest.

I remember being shown code in MAPICS along the lines of "I want to remove this code but I don't know what it does, so I have to leave it here" - that was 20 years ago - maybe that line is still there!

Vern

On 10/22/2015 6:45 AM, Scott Johnson wrote:

Charles,

I thought this was odd too, but most of the core logic in XA is still RPG/400. I would not doubt it if some is still from the Mapics days. I do believe their newer stuff is RPG IV fixed. Their code generator for user exists can't handle field names over 8 characters in length. Their warning message says 6, but we have found we can push it to 8.

We run supported. That is the main reason we don't convert their stuff to RPGIV. It would further lengthen the apply ptf process. There have been several cases where if I am making a change to vendor's RPG/400 source and instead of doing it there, I add a 'simple' CALL and do my coding in a RPG IV program. In most cases it is not that easy because you have to make changes all over the place.

Thanks,
Scott Johnson

-----Original Message-----
From: WDSCI-L [mailto:wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Charles Wilt
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2015 3:07 PM
To: Rational Developer for IBM i / Websphere Development Studio Client for System i & iSeries
Subject: Re: [WDSCI-L] RPG III (RPG/400)

​I don't quite understand this...

I'd expect any current version of a vendor package to be RPG IV at this point. If for no other reason than it saves having to require new customers to buy both OPM and ILE compilers. In fact, during our recent ERP search, both packages I looked at were RPG IV. Maybe not as much ILE as I would have liked, but they both were at least using RPG IV and some ILE.

If you're running unsupported, then I'd follow Buck's example of converting to RPG IV for any changed program.

Honestly, I've got some unsupported RPG III, and even if all I'm doing is looking at the source, I'll convert it to RPG IV (in a temp library) and pull it up in RDi.​

Charles


On Wed, Oct 21, 2015 at 3:14 PM, Scott Johnson <Scott.Johnson@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

We are using Infor XA. So for that we still see a lot of RPG/400. (A
couple of them have hit the 50 file limit.) Existing in-house programs
that have been developed in the past are a mix of RPG/400 & RPG IV
(both fixed and free).
New in-house is RPG IV Free.

We did get RDi 9.1.1.1 installed on all of the developers PCs recently.
They also went thru a training session with IBM. Those that have tried
RDi like it. They just tend to fall back to old habits.
I pretty much use RDi fulltime. It is funny because they will ask me
how to do something in greenscreen TurnOver and I can't remember how to do it.
But I can go into the RDi plugin and do it in no time flat without
even thinking. :)


Thanks,
Scott Johnson

-----Original Message-----
From: WDSCI-L [mailto:wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Terry
Hertel
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2015 1:21 PM
To: wdsci-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [WDSCI-L] RPG III (RPG/400)

I'm wondering how many people using RDi are still supporting RPG III
(RPG/400) code? All of our new development is done in RPG IV but our
manufacturing and financial systems are old purchased software
originally written in RPG III (RPG/400). There are some functions that
aren't supported for RPG member types and some that is not missing but
for all practical purposes is hidden unless you know the shortcuts.
I'm pretty sure we're in the minority but am wondering how many of us are out there.
--

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Jon Paris

www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com