Re: The real problem with the SQL precompilers (was SQL on AS400...)

[Jon Paris <Jon.Paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I agree with your assessment.  I know IBM has made some improvements  
> to the pre-compiler (thanks Gina!), but this disconnect still bites  
> us all the time.  WDSC (RDi) falls over when reviewing compiler  
> errors, debugging is ugly, x-ref and outline features are  
> incomplete, etc.....  IBM needs to eliminate this asap.  Seems to be  
> in IBM's best interest to make their tools usable, without the work- 
> arounds that we currently are stuck with.  IBM should find this  
> situation embarrassing.

I think the opportunity has already been missed.

When they were contemplating making the changes that we have recently  
seen (and I agree that Gina did good work) they had the opportunity to  
throw it all away and start over and do it properly.  They chose  
instead to put more chewing gum and baler twine on an already flawed  
approach.  We can't blame Gina for that - she wasn't responsible for  
the architectural decisions.  I suspect that budget (both in Toronto  
and Rochester) was the ultimate stumbling block.

The ridiculous aspect of this is that the compiler on which RPG IV was  
based already used the "compiler in charge" approach and it had to be  
disabled for the ILE implementation.  The result of course is that the  
pre-compiler is almost doomed to be forever behind the compiler as it  
always has to be updated whenever the compiler changes.  That's  
constant duplication of effort which could have been avoided with a re- 
write.

Jon Paris

www.Partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com