OO in Batch (Was: Program ID)

From: Joe Zitzelberger (joe_zitzelberger_at_nospam.com)
Date: 06/25/04 

Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 08:08:29 -0400

There seem to be a great number of people that don't believe batch
processing can benefit from object oriented code. This confuses me, I
can think of several places where it would be a geat boon. JOTTOMH:

   Files & Databases.
   The traditional batch program needs to be recompiled and retested
when file attributes change, data formats are shifted, IMS layout
changes, etc. In a shop with a large number of programs, this can be
troublesome and time consuming.
   With OO, a file access object can be created which will read records
and publish a set of standard property fields. Adding, removing and
reformatting fields requires operation on a single object and a single
set of source.

   Collections & Tables.
   Cobol has been living in data structure poverty for a long time.
It's only collection structure, the table, is quite limited. Using LE
(or your compilers utility routines) storage allocation routines and
either manual or automatic complex-ODO one can usually represent the
most complicated of structures. But it is not pretty.
   OO offers us a way to build dynamically resizeable collections
easily. And saves us from excessive preallocation.