Re: COBOL File Specs to DDS or SQL

On 2012/8/16 9:30 AM, DrFranken wrote:

Suppose I had some COBOL specifications that defined a file layout.
Could I take those and programatically turn it into either DDS or an SQL
statement to create the file? The Specs are available in a file.

Thing is the record is 12,000 bytes wide and the COBOL specs are 4,500
lines long! Many are redefines and sub-fields which are not needed.
Doing this by hand seems daunting and fraught with peril. Incoming file
needs to be read, processed and then returned to customer with
delimiters between fields.

ILE COBOL has an XML GENERATE function. I think you could read the file, use XML GENERATE to output an XML version of each record, and then post-process the resulting XML to generate your delimited file.

I'm not sure whether it would handle the extra subfields or redefines the way you'd want, though.

Here's a little example. It's just generating to another field, but you can get it to generate to an IFS file too.

I didn't do any redefines, but aren't COBOL redefines separate from the structure anyway? (I'm not even good enough with COBOL to qualify as a beginner, so I'm not sure about this.)

DATA DIVISION.
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
1 rec.
2 s1 PIC X(6).
3 s1a pic X(3).
3 s1b pic X(3).
2 s2 PIC X(6).
3 s2a pic X(3).
3 s2b pic X(3).
2 s3 pic 9999 usage binary.

01 XMLRESULT pic x(100).

PROCEDURE DIVISION.
M.
MOVE "EE1FF2" TO s1
MOVE "GG3HH4" TO s2
MOVE "GG3HH4" TO s2
MOVE -123 to s3
XML GENERATE XMLRESULT FROM rec
END-XML
STOP RUN
.

EVAL xmlresult
XMLRESULT =
....5...10...15...20...25...30...35...40...45...50...55...60
1 '<rec><s1><s1a>EE1</s1a><s1b>FF2</s1b></s1><s2><s2a>GG3</s2a>'
61 '<s2b>HH4</s2b></s2><s3>123</s3></rec> '

<rec>
<s1>
<s1a>EE1</s1a>
<s1b>FF2</s1b>
</s1>
<s2>
<s2a>GG3</s2a>
<s2b>HH4</s2b>
</s2>
<s3>123</s3>
</rec>