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  • Old Code And High Maintenance

    January 20, 2014 Dan Burger

    There are old RPG applications that just run and run. Minimal maintenance is required and the people who depend on these apps couldn’t be happier. But, you may have heard, this bliss is not universal. More often, application maintenance gets sloppy as the fingerprints of many coders, some perhaps with dubious credentials, takes a toll. Add a growing demand that applications do more and rely on data from multiple systems. New demands and old apps make for an odd couple.

    Talk with an RPG programmer who deals with old code in a high maintenance circumstance and one that requires old applications do new tricks. That’s exactly what I did last week. Ken Killian, an RPG programmer for USXpress works in that environment. His skills with two tools–IBM‘s Rational Developer for i and the Linoma RPG Toolbox–are helping one of the largest trucking companies in the United States move forward. Two benefits–writing applications faster and maintaining source code more effectively–are the payoff.

    This isn’t venturing into the unknown and untested. Killian has been at this for nearly 10 years. He has worked with IBM midrange computers since 1990. Most of the RPG code that is used at USXpress displays in a green screen. Some of it has a Microsoft .NET GUI on the front end so it displays in a more convenient format on the mobile devices that drivers rely on in their mobile offices. IBM i data is replicated to a SQL Server as part of the solution. That will raise some eyebrows among the IBM i faithful, but the trucking company with roughly 90 percent of its fleet using Windows-embedded devices finds the arrangement convenient.

    “I’ve been employed here for nine years and have used the Toolbox for nine years,” Killian said. “Just recently I’ve been using it to convert fixed-format RPG to free-form with a plug-in for Rational Developer for i. This is easier than using the Toolbox with SEU. It saves steps. The auto indent of code is one of the many assets. It’s the number one thing I use the Toolbox to accomplish.”

    Killian learned to code in fixed-format and because that’s what he was used to the conversion to free-format was not easy. If anyone tells you any change in routine is going to be easy, you have good reason to doubt it. But not trying something new because it is uncomfortable leads nowhere.

    “Before I came to this company, I was used to doing fixed-format RPG. I wanted to do free-format, but I had been programmed to do fixed-format for years,” Killian said. “When I asked to do free-format in that job, I was slapped down with the excuse: ‘We don’t do free-format here.’ So I gave up asking. Eventually, though, my boss decided we should be moving forward and made free-format part of my learning objectives.”

    The first step toward learning free-form RPG was to continue writing in fixed-format. Then he would use the Linoma RPG Toolbox to convert his fixed-format to free-format. Examining the code, he could see what was changing, which led him to start writing in free-format.

    “I believe these types of things have to come down from management,” Killian said. “They have to push to make changes like this happen. It’s not like people don’t want to do it. There’s a high workload in many shops and there’s very little ‘play time’ to learn new things. Management needs to make room for learning new things. And people need to put in some afterhours time, too.”

    The four-person development team Killian works on includes three .NET developers and a single RPG developer. New applications that incorporate RPG are a priority for converting fixed-format code to free-format. One of the lessons he learned was how to avoid getting burned when converting old RPG code to free form. His advice is not to get over aggressive without testing and debugging; there will be errors.

    “In my section, I have been working with the same code for nine years and have converted it all to free-form. I am constantly executing this code. If it blows up in the middle of the night, it is a lot easier to read and maintain on the rare occasions when that happens,” he said. “The biggest complaint when converting code is that you didn’t convert everything. There will be things that can’t be converted without doing the conversion manually.”

    Management is always going to ask about the payoff for taking on the conversion. Ease of maintenance that results in less time devoted to maintenance is the main thing. RPG free-format even makes sense to a Microsoft programmer, Killian says.

    “I use RDi 99 percent of the time,” he says. “If I am only testing a three- to five-line bit of code, I’ll use SEU. But even if I write a little 20-line bit of test code to verify a routine, I hate checking for errors in SEU. When I started using RDi, I was only using it 10 percent of the time and it was driving me nuts, but you get used to it.”

    He’s trying to convince other RPG developers to use RDi and I am showing off the short cuts. The size of the RPG development staff varies between 12 and 14, but only three are using RDi full time and it’s been available in the department for seven years. The RPG Toolbox version 5, which just became available, has a plug in for RDi allowing both to be used from the same interface.

    The biggest difference between RPG Toolbox 5 and the earlier versions is that the predecessors only allowed conversions of the C specs, while version 5, which corresponds to the release of IBM i 7.1 Technology Refresh 7, converts the traditional H, F, D, and P specifications to also be recompiled in free-form syntax.

    RELATED STORIES

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    Will Modern, Free-Form RPG Bring New Blood To The Platform?

    RPG, Database Top Enhancements In IBM i 7.1 Technology Release 7



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    Do the Math When Looking at IBM i Hosting for Cost Savings

    COVID-19 has accelerated certain business trends that were already gaining strength prior to the start of the pandemic. E-commerce, telehealth, and video conferencing are some of the most obvious examples. One example that may not be as obvious to the general public but has a profound impact on business is the shift in strategy of IBM i infrastructure from traditional, on-premises environments to some form of remote configuration. These remote configurations and all of their variations are broadly referred to in the community as IBM i hosting.

    “Hosting” in this context can mean different things to different people, and in general, hosting refers to one of two scenarios. In the first scenario, hosting can refer to a client owned machine that is housed in a co-location facility (commonly called a co-lo for short) where the data center provides traditional system administrator services, relieving the client of administrative and operational responsibilities. In the second scenario, hosting can refer to an MSP owned machine in which partition resources are provided to the client in an on-demand capacity. This scenario allows the client to completely outsource all aspects of Power Systems hardware and the IBM i operating system and database.

    The scenario that is best for each business depends on a number of factors and is largely up for debate. In most cases, pursuing hosting purely as a cost saving strategy is a dead end. Furthermore, when you consider all of the costs associated with maintaining and IBM i environment, it is typically not a cost-effective option for the small to midsize market. The most cost-effective approach for these organizations is often a combination of a client owned and maintained system (either on-prem or in a co-lo) with cloud backup and disaster-recovery-as-a-service. Only in some cases of larger enterprise companies can a hosting strategy start to become a potentially cost-effective option.

    However, cost savings is just one part of the story. As IBM i expertise becomes scarce and IT resources run tight, the only option for some firms may be to pursue hosting in some capacity. Whatever the driving force for pursing hosting may be, the key point is that it is not just simply an option for running your workload in a different location. There are many details to consider and it is to the best interest of the client to work with an experienced MSP in weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each option. As COVID-19 rolls on, time will tell if IBM i hosting strategies will follow the other strong business trends of the pandemic.

    When we say do the math in the title above, it literally means that you need to do the math for your particular scenario. It is not about us doing the math for you, making a case for either staying on premises or for moving to the cloud. There is not one answer, but just different levels of cost to be reckoned which yield different answers. Most IBM i shops have fairly static workloads, at least measured against the larger mix of stuff on the public clouds of the world. How do you measure the value of controlling your own IT fate? That will only be fully recognized at the moment when it is sorely missed the most.

    CONTINUE READING ARTICLE

    Please visit ucgtechnologies.com/IBM-POWER9-systems for more information.

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Volume 24, Number 2 -- January 20, 2014
THIS ISSUE SPONSORED BY:

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Table of Contents

  • IBM Winds Down Older CPU And Memory Ahead Of Power8
  • Key Info Unlocks Its Cloud
  • Old Code And High Maintenance
  • Mad Dog 21/21: Curate’s Eggs
  • JD Edwards And The Big Red Money Machine
  • IBM Broadens Power Systems SAS Adapters
  • IBM Gets EMEA Integrators And ISVs To Push Power Systems
  • SAP Credits Cloud, HANA For A Terrific Year
  • IBM Rules The Patent Roost For 21 Years Straight
  • IBM Cuts Flash Copy Tags For Storwize V5000

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