Re: IBM i "Open I/O" Architecture -- MIDRANGE-L

If we are saying that people on the AS/400 will not change then all of this
is a waste of time.

We just need to accept the fact that the AS/400 is dead and move on.

Companies are simply not going to pay to have RPG programmers continue to
write unmaintainable monolith applications.It is just too expensive.

Even if I have a better way to write to web or other devices what good does
that do me if the code supporting it is a big blob?

I am working everyday with Java programmers and they spend all their time
thinking about being reusable code. Separating out display, service and
database layers. If I have to maintain something which are you going to want
to maintain. Something structured or a big blob of code with hundreds of
global variables, subroutines that hundreds of things and the same logic in
different versions in dozens of programs? To me the answer is obvious and if
you look around you see that companies are voting with their feet. New
projects are going to modern languages and modern programmers.

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 9:10 AM, Jon Paris <jon.paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Nice summary Nathan.

I think you have hit it square on.

What many people miss is that if the vast majority of RPGers were
going to write and use subprocedures for everything outside of basic
RPG I/O they would have done it by now. Lets face it, subprocedures
have been around for 10+ years and are still not extensively used in
more than perhaps 30% of shops. The reasons why are many and varied
but certainly include the fact that a large number of programmers have
continued in the belief that if the web etc really mattered to them
then IBM would have given them op-codes. Open I/O is the closest to
that option that we are going to see - if it can't move those folks
then there really is no hope. But even for those of us who do use
subprocedures, Open I/O still offers some very interesting
possibilities.

Jon Paris

www.Partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com

On 22-Oct-09, at 10:36 AM, midrange-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Well, it's true that one can do just about anything with procedures
that IBM has traditionally done with open, read, write, etc. But
IBM's interface is more familiar, streamlined, and consistent.

It appears to me that Open I/O could signal a new level of
cooperation between IBM and 3rd party vendors to extend RPG's reach
to new devices and databases. If a file name, record name, and
device type were passed to an Open I/O handler, along with an I/O
buffer, then it would be possible for 3rd parties to write generic
Open I/O handlers to implement various data management and device
management operations while maintaining a familiar, streamlined, and
consistent programming interface.

This topic has triggered a number of ideas about extending RPG's
reach to other database platforms, and UI devices.

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