Re: COBOL400-L Digest, Vol 9, Issue 7

Chuck thanks for the input.

I really don't see why you'd want to do it anyway. I can (kinda) see
reading the file using a logical that includes a subset of the fields but
then you'd call the update program to do any updates right? The update
program would then read the record for update, move the data and then

write

so it could initialize any fields as needed. You're still better off
including individual fields in your calling parameters instead of using

the

whole record.

I rarely define logical files with field subsets because you never know

when

you'll need one of the fields you didn't include in the logical. I

recently

worked on a system where the original programmers included only the fields
they needed when they wrote programs. They ended up with a LOT of logical
files with the same keys but different fields. It was a real mess.

Well there are old programs passing the full lengths already, and currently
we don't have a bunch of logicals with specific fields defined. Our
process is to compile everything just seeing if easier way of doing it. I
have been starting to use SQL on new programs I have done that are running
all by themselves, just have not started to integrate with old programs
yet.


Thanks,

Jeff