RE: RPG naming

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Booth Martin
> 
> Interesting article Joe.  Will IBM provide any information, especially
in
> the area of migrations?  My experience, limited as it is, says that
many
> of these conversions have been declared a victory, but only after
> expectations were dramatically lowered.

Well, IBM doesn't seem to have a vested interest either way.  They'll
sell you an iSeries, a pSeries, an xSeries or a zSeries.  The iSeries
group within IBM isn't doing much marketing right now, although today's
New Wire Daily from iSeries Network talks about a couple of successful
moves from Windows to iSeries.

> Another slant to this issue that I have seen is the impact of employee
> turnover in these situations.  When a conversion goes sour, heads
roll.
> New
> people are brought in, new money pumped in, and the cycle is begun
again.
> After a couple of these cycles, and a system that is nearly broken, a
new
> low level of performance is established and from then on each new
> performance plateau is heralded as the new wave.  Five years later the
> system again has much (but not all) of its original functions &
features,
> and victory is declared.

This is the same thing we're seeing with outsourcing.  Major projects
are outsourced with much ballyhooed cost savings.  The projects begin
almost immediately to falter, but by that time the folks responsible
have taken their bonuses and moved on to "help" other companies.
Eventually, if the firm is lucky, the project is taken back in-house
before they go bankrupt and the project is finally finished, way over
budget and with limited functionality.


> As to RPG being renamed,  I must admit that I like the current naming
> schema RPG-IV says it all.  Every 15 years it changes so much it needs
> a new name but it is backwards compatible, so IV is the proper suffix
> for now.  It does surprise me though that the /free ability was not
> enough to change the name to RPG-V?.

I have to admit that I hadn't considered the backward compatibility
aspect, Booth.  That's an important and distinguishing characteristic of
RPG.  Then again, most languages other tan those from Microsoft have
some stability from release to release.

I was thinking of IBM perhaps even presenting DB2/PL to ANSI.  That way
the language would get some credibility outside our community.  They
could make the language platform-independent but preserve the
5250-specific aspects under an iSeries-specific extension.  You could
add a specification (an S-spec?) to identify the system, sort of like
you do with COBOL.

Joe