Re-compiling quiz programs

[Jon Hawks]

Richard,

Just a new twist on the subject and I guess it's time
to me to let some air out again. (Not half as much as
some of my peers though!).

I have had the opportunity to write generic report
launchers that auto-streamed quiz/qtp jobs, on
hp-mpex, dec-openvms and hp-ux. At various stages of
the 4GL maturation process, some of these required
real-time compiling and some pre-compiling. Sometimes
the nature of the applications required quiz/qtp to
run directly from a screen app or menu, requiring
preparation to run in an executable form. 

Sometimes we had to group a lot of quick commands
together or back-to-back to prep the job launch. As
usual, the need for compile on-line vs pre-compile is
in the 'it depends' category. I also found a site that
never pre-compiled, they always compiled at run time,
within the job stream. I still wonder what they did
when an error occured in production? They touted that
it always guaranteed the latest and greatest pick-ups
from new schemas and no one had to worry about keeping
track of what to compile. I also had the experience
that some people will pick up your work and not be
able to tell you did anything to the program, so they
'fix' it again. Some from ignorance, some to take
credit. Go figure. What's worse, those that trespass
or those that believe they are the righteous.

Some of the most clever routines I wrote were
developed at the Budd Company, in Troy, MI, on VMS. I
can certainly put you in touch with the people who
know these routines intimately. I later used this
routine as the basis of creating a generic job
launcher on a unix platform at DTE. 

Back to compiling. There are so many alternatives to
consider for compiling in groups. We even got to the
point that we had to compile and execute a qtp
program, prior to compiling a bunch of quiz programs,
at Budd. All within the single compile job. We had qtp
going off withing quiz, job prompts in-laid into the
stream to obtain specific values to enable the rest of
the compile. We've had to work through subfiles saved
and unsaved, being present to finish these huge
compiles. 
Fun stuff.


Just a work on the ux-platform which required
emulating quiz/qtp prompts, since ux is not vms and
can't do the simple things vms can do. Also, there
were about 1400 programs/jobs we have to genericize.
We had to use some parameter driven control files, to
drive and manage the prompting emulation. All this,
since unix does not play well with the
job-qtp/quiz/prompting/launching features. from the
menu, and submitting the job in batch mode or
background, if you will.  We also had to hand-off to
Maestro. 

After coming from MPEX and VMS, I found Unix to be
very verbose and unforgiving. The vi editor was very
much like the one I used at school in (gulp) 1974. For
real.

Anyway, I've said enough. Everyone, have a great
weekend. Peace, Love and all that hippy stuff from the
1960's.




--- Richard Witkopp <richard.witkopp@idt.com> wrote:
> > Speaking of the Devil of Uncompiled Quiz.  What's
> the ratio of sites 
> > that use compiled Quiz vs uncompiled Quiz?
> > 
> > I've worked only in a few (HP Only) shops that
> used compiled Quiz.
> > Performance has never really that much of a
> problem, vis-a-vis the 
> > two methods.  (Faux-pas such as huge access
> statements mess-up 
> > performance just as much as on compiled Quiz as
> uncompiled.)
> 
> Three shops I worked in compiled everything, one did
> not (all VMS).
> Most of the time, reports were run from a menu.
> Compiling on the fly
> looks pretty ugly to the user and eats up way too
> much time.
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=====
Jon Jared Hawks
Partnership is a privilege.  Don't abuse it.
Practice Director, Business Intelligence Applications
PowerShift, Inc.(407) 855-9400, (863) 682-3952
Anything you read from Jon (Jared) Hawks is his own
expressed opinion, and, in no way, is the opinion of
the company he represents.

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