Re: RPG III (RPG/400)

Charles

Yeah, I think I can go along with that - having tried recently to convert a copy of some nasty RPG II to as modern as it could get using Linoma's tooling, it left the nasty stuff still there and it probably would have worked. Ugly as sin, of course!!

Vern

On 10/22/2015 8:53 AM, Charles Wilt wrote:

Vern,

I'm not saying a vendor should rewrite into free format, or even true RPG
IV (ie. bifs & evals)

I'm simply saying at this point, IMO there's little excuse to have not run
CVTRPGSRC and be using the RPG IV compiler on the old code.

Call it RPG III+ ;)

Charles

On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 9:39 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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