VAX RPG II - History

History

Originally released in 1984, VAX RPG II represented Digital Equipment Corporation's interpretation of IBM's successful RPG II programming language. Product updates continued through 1986 with the release of version 2.1. VAX RPG II survived in maintenance mode for several more years.

VAX RPG II represented Digital's unique interpretation of the RPG II programming language. The product's strong points were its full screen editor and symbolic debugger interface, along with interactive screen support via FMS or DECforms. Its weakness was its poor compatibility with IBM RPG II. At best, VAX RPG II offered a subset of IBM RPG II functionality. This lack of compatibility doomed VAX RPG II's chances of becoming a mainstream programming language under OpenVMS.

That said, VAX RPG II did achieve limited market penetration and sites running the product on legacy VAX systems are still to be found. From 1985 through 1989, Digital's Massachusetts based IBM midrange migration team developed tools and supported migrations to both VAX RPG II and another Digital sponsored RPG compiler, Migration RPG.

In 1989, Digital consolidated its competitive IBM midrange migration program in the Colorado Springs based Center for Migration Services. By then the fate of VAX RPG II was clear, so further development efforts were targeted solely at Migration RPG.

In 1992, Digital elected to drop support for VAX RPG II. However, instead of simply terminating the product and offering Migration RPG as its replacement, parties within Digital elected to transfer ownership of VAX RPG II to a third party. The third party did no further product development and soon dropped VAX RPG II entirely.

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