Re: Copy book layout - can a compiler tell?

On 7/8/2010 11:13 AM, Thorbjoern Ravn Andersen wrote:

We now have a situation where we want to send copy members over data
queues from Cobol to Java and back again. Previously in similar
situation where we need to share a data structure, I have recreated the
Cobol data structure by hand in Java, which is a bit tedious and error
prone.
...
I was wondering if any of the Cobol compilers on the i could be asked
nicely to generate a dump of the resulting datastructure, so you could
look up "PACKINGGROUP" and be told "ah, that is a character array 10
long placed in index 142 (or so) of PARAM-FIELDS". We use OPM Cobol but
ILE would be fine too.

PCML might help. You could try defining a program with your data structure as a parameter to the program, and ask the ILE COBOL compiler to generate PCML.

CRTBNDCBL PGMINFO(*PCML) INFOSTMF(...)

The PCML can be used by the ProgramCallDocument class of Java.

I was able to generate the PCML when I removed the FILLER line so the subfields were defined as part of PARAM-FIELDS. (I also had to rename CLASS since it seems to be a reserved word.)

01 PARAM-FIELDS PIC X(1024).
03 STATUS-CODE PIC X(02).
...