RE: COBOL as part of an application environment

> From: Winchester Terry
>
> I believe the only way you can do this is via bound Service
> Programs -- but I'm not versed in that area. Of course, just
> calling an RPG program is dead simple (just like CL).

Too bad.  Prototyped procedure calls are way powerful.


> I wished Cobol had better string handling. The String/Unstring
> statements work pretty well if you understand but they can
> become quite complicated.  Having some special "intrinsic
> functions" like RPG would be nice :)

I noticed that.  You can get some serious run-on sentences when you're doing
string manipulation <grin>.


> The language is great for Business Logic because of its
> general readability.  One of the accountants was looking over
> my shoulder the other day commenting on some code and agreeing
> to a change that he wanted.  I wasn't very familiar with the
> program, but it was nice having 2 heads thinking about it :)

As RPG moves towards a C-like syntax (thanks to the folks on the compiler
team), since COBOL is included with the compilers now I'm going to have to
seriously consider it as an option for development.  Considering the fact
that you can do lots of development "offline" with PC-based COBOL tools,
it's silly not to at least consider COBOL when I'm thinking about
development.

Man, who'd'a thunk an old assembler guy like me would be looking at COBOL?
<grin>

Joe