RE: OPM vs. ILE -- COBOL400-L

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Does separating the file handler from the application program allow you to
add a field to the end of a file, and not force a re-compile (except of the
file handler pgm)?

Can you add a field to the middle of a format or expand an old field in the
middle of a format and still not recompile all pgms that touch the file
(except of the file handler pgm)?

In OPM, wouldnt this slow things down dramatically because of sloy dynamic
calls?

Thanks

-----Original Message-----
From: David Silber [mailto:david.silber@hpdsoftware.com]
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 3:26 AM
To: 'COBOL400-L@midrange.com'
Subject: Re: OPM vs. ILE


A couple of comments in response to Jim Essinger's contribution.

(1) Pedantic -- I believe the O in OPM stands for Original, not Old
(2) You don't need ILE to create a pgm that does all your file I/O. We use
OPM COBOL and from the beginning designed a high-level I/O handler which all
'application' pgms call and a low-level handler (containing the Select
clause etc.) that does the actual I/O. Only the high-level handler calls the
low-level handler, thus insulating regular programs from the real I/O. This
has served us well because record sizes frequently increase and when they
do, we only have to change the high- and low-level handlers.
(3) Pointers - we are using Pointers, though in a limited way, in OPM COBOL.
(4) In my view, it would be a very unusual company that could take advantage
of C, COBOL, CL and RPG to warrant putting an application under ILE. I could
see a combination of 2, maybe 3 but not more. Having said all that, I'd
still like to go to ILE COBOL because that's the only one that is going to
support parts of the COBOL 2002 standard. But that decision isn't mine to
take.

David Silber, Quality Consultant
HPD Software Ltd



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