SAA Historical perspective

["Jon Paris" <Jon.Paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 >> Are you saying the RPGIV compiler is based on the SAA compiler?

Yes.  Although probably not as tightly as management were led to believe it
would be <grin>

The RPG400 compiler was written in PL/MI.  In theory that should have ported
to the PL/X dialects on OS/2 and S/390.  In practice the dialects were so
far apart it was a virtual rewrite.  Since the gods of SAA were paying for
it, a new compiler was able to  be written in C for the S/390.
Interestingly this is where Bob's original statement is closest to the
truth.  It was the uproar among 400 users about _not_ having RPG included in
SAA that caused IBM to include it in the first place.

Anyway, there was now a new C based RPG compiler.  We wanted to do RPG IV
and we could point to and say that we could use that as a base, and that's
what happened.

Would we have ever got permission for a completely new compiler?  I doubt it
very much indeed.  Using the SAA base also had the advantage of getting
something for all the $s that were spent on it apart from the few licenses
that wee sold!

Jon Paris
Partner400