RE: Stupid question of the century -- MIDRANGE-L

Ahhh... that makes sense.

Well your boss is right it is a pain having to get users off the system for
promotions to live. But moving away from RPG to something else won't
completely relieve that pain.

Even web based stuff needs servers restarting for some major changes,
although for a lot of changes you don't.

I'd say one very quick win you can get is to make use of extension files. If
you are truely adding a field to a file that only one or two programs need
access to then why does that field have to be on the same file.

If you have the file Customer that all of a sudden needs a field called last
OrderDate. Create a file called CustomerEXT owned by Customer and add
OrderDate to it. While you are at it you could add loads of spare flags and
fields as well.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alan Shore
Sent: 09 May 2009 19:06
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: Stupid question of the century

Thanks for your reply Neil
What you have described can be somewhat circumvented by using level check
of *NO (audible gasps and shouts of "heretic") and adding only alpha fields
(even if a numeric field is what is desired)
The boss's boss wants a quicker turnaround of projects, so much so that we
have been asked to look into other languages available on the AS/400 (EGL
is the first one and that might mean another thread in and of itself)
He is tired of having to wait to change/recompile ALL the applicable
programs for a change to a file, then having to push the appropriate people
off the system so that these changes can be applied to the files on the
production system

Alan Shore
Programmer/Analyst, Distribution
E:AShore@xxxxxxxxxxx
P:(631) 200-5019
C:(631) 880-8640
"If you're going through Hell, keep going" - Winston Churchill

midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 05/09/2009 01:52:52 PM:

Let me get this straight.

I am an RPG program that has an internally described file open that the
operating system has checked has the same format level ID as the file I

was

compiled against.

And you now want to change that file so that the program will either A)

Fall

over in a heap on the next read or write operation or B) continue to

process

as normal but silently corrupt data all over the place.

I really would advise your bosses, bosses that want he wants is a bad
idea!!!!

Can we have the context of why your boss wants this? There might be a

less

risky solution.

That said I'll be shocked if anyone knows how to do want you need :-)

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alan Shore
Sent: 09 May 2009 18:18
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Stupid question of the century

Hi guys
I've just been asked the following question by my boss's boss
Is there anyway to add new fields (columns) "on the fly" to an existing
file, without having an exclusive lock on that file.
In other words, the file is still being used while the field is added
I know that chgpf is out of the question (unless someone proves me

wrong).

I know that SQL is also out of the question (ALTER TABLE x ADD EXTRAFIELD
DEC(7, 2) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0) - again unless someone proves me wrong
If anyone knows of any way, any language, any procedure, any function to
achieve this, please drop me a line.

Thanks in advance

Alan Shore
Programmer/Analyst, Distribution
E:AShore@xxxxxxxxxxx
P:(631) 200-5019
C:(631) 880-8640
"If you're going through Hell, keep going" - Winston Churchill
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