Over the past year, there have been thousands of electronic messages flying over the Internet arguing the merits of RPG vs. Java and vice versa. The inevitable trend in all of these messages was the comparison of specific language syntax and features. An RPG programmer would claim that he could code a routine more with fewer lines of code than a Java programmer. There were endless words guessing about how OS/400 generated the underlying machine code necessary to run these programs.
The fact is that when arguing at this level, there are merits to both sides of the argument. RPG at V5R1 is better than it has ever been as far as procedural languages go. It is an extremely robust language and, yes, you can do everything with it that you can with Java -- but in a different way.
It isn't the fact that Java is portable, or new, that makes it a preferable choice for developing systems today. It is object-oriented without the technical challenges and baggage of C++ or other object-oriented languages.
My technical tips this year will explore the object-oriented design and the benefits of object-oriented languages when implemented with Java that provide a much superior solution to procedural languages such as COBOL and RPG. We will examine the model/view/controller paradigm and explore what an object is and how objects interact. We will explore persistency and compare Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) to persistency frameworks using the JDBC but will focus on the benefits of object persistency.
When looking at Java, be careful. Don?t fall into the trap of "I can write this program in less statements in this language." That isn't what it's all about. It?s about systems, objects and isolating system function into discrete interchangeable components.
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About the author: Bob Cancilla is managing director of IGNITe/400, an electronic iSeries 400 Internet users group. He is also author of the book Getting Down to e-business with AS/400.
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