A "better" COBOL. 7

[tgreer]

I've been asked to research finding a "better COBOL" for my company. I know that's subjective, so bear with me. We currently use CA-Realia Workbench 3.1.

We're in a Windows NT/2000/XP PC environment.

A short list of what "better" might mean:

- faster

- better file i/o (more on this later)

- COM/Automation/ActiveX

- .NET integration (maybe... we don't particularly care for .NET's huge installation footprint, nor Microsoft's tendency to change everything once other players get involved. And that's from a C#/ASP.NET developer, folks.)

Which Windows/PC COBOL vendor did YOU choose? Why? What were YOUR criteria?

One of the problems, I'm told, is file i/o. We work with huge customer-provided text and binary files. We have to "do stuff" to them. These may be PostScript files, PCL files, or data files. Many times the developers must code multiple passes through the file. Once to find specific records or strings, a second time to insert code, a third to move chunks of data around. I'm told this is because COBOL doesn't support random file i/o.

Is this true? Is it true under certain conditions, but not in others? Is it true of certain compilers? I ask because I see references to "RANDOM" and "DYNAMIC" access modes. (I'm not, yet, a COBOL programmer, so forgive the ignorance.)

Would another language entirely be a "better COBOL"? Perl? I used to program in PL/B, which is an ANSI standard language, with excellent file i/o, string manipulation, character- based AND GUI/event-driven programming, plus COM/ActiveX. Perhaps switching from COBOL to PL/B would be the right choice:

http://www.sunbelt-plb.com.

I'm looking for a good discussion / debate / education on the pros and cons of the various COBOL vendors, plus thoughts on migrating to other languages.

Thanks in advance for your thoughtful responses.



Thomas D. Greer

http://www.tgreer.com

Providing PostScript & PDF
Training, Development & Consulting

 

[tgreer]

Crox, and others...

As a learning exercise for myself, and as a means of comparison, I plan on writing the "same" program as Tom posted, in PL/B, and also in C#. Of course the approaches will differ. C# is completely class-oriented, and both C# and PL/B allow random access, so my guess is they'll be faster.

Then, I plan on writing a pure "string manipulation" program in all three languages, to remove the file i/o component.

I'll post the results here, and may need your help in "tuning" the COBOL so that the result don't suffer from my own clumsiness with the language.

It's nice to have a thread where so many have participated. Thanks again to everyone.

Thomas D. Greer

http://www.tgreer.com

Providing PostScript & PDF
Training, Development & Consulting

 

[Dimandja]

>Of course the approaches will differ. C# is completely class-oriented, and both C# and PL/B allow random access, so my guess is they'll be faster.

Keep an open mind! You may be surprised.