Re: RDi 9.6 is now available!!!

Buck,

I believe that the impetus for RDi-Lite has nothing to do with feature overload, rather it was a suggestion for IBM to produce a FREE version that contains fewer features, so people would get used to it and some will upgrade to the full-featured version.

It might be a good idea short term, but I think that in the big picture IBM would be shooting themselves in the foot, due to the extra costs of maintaining an extra version. IMHO, the way to go is to charge an extra few (and I do mean a few, as in under $100) dollars for the compilers/development tools and include RDi as part of the suite. IBM should be falling all over themselves to encourage development on this platform, instead of requiring "extras" to modernize.

-mark

On 11/17/2017 12:00 PM, Buck Calabro wrote:

On 16 November 2017 at 13:26, Ken Killian<kkillian@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

But, comparing MS SQL Server VS IBM Data Studio, Microsoft wins all around...
What to retrieve the sql source? Right-click and retrieve....
Want to see the field name, code-assist is EXCELLENT...

There are lots of people who complain that the existing RDi has 'too
much stuff' to learn. We've seen this list speak favourably of an
RDi-lite - an RDi with fewer features. I can only imagine what that
group of people would think about gluing on all the SQL Server / VS
functionality (probably with shortcut keys configurable to be the
same).

When it comes to DB design/integration, I don't think the midrange
community has come to a consensus about what that might mean. For
example, wouldn't it be nice to be editing an RPG program, start
typing exec sql select from my_product_master, press F4 and have a GUI
pop up that lets one choose the columns that go in the SELECT clause?
And maybe a check-box that would create identically named host
variables? In the dcl-s section of my sub-procedure? With a
check-box for 'create an array DS' so I can easily do a 'for 100
rows'? This is a chore I go through all the time. I started to work
on a plug-in to do that but my Eclipse-fu is weak. Anyway, the point
is that the community has some work to do in order to get IBM to
provide what it wants. People have legitimate needs and wants, and
IBM has the RFE process whereby we can share those needs and wants.
They've shown over and over that they listen and respond to RFEs.

wrt 9.6, I'm already liking the behaviour when I hover [1] over a
variable in the editor. A nice addition to lighten my cognitive
workload for a chore I do a lot.

--buck

[1] This feature might be The One that gets me using the mouse while I edit.