Re: How proprietary is the "COBOL file system"


Pete Dashwood <dashwood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5m953cFc85a2U1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It was precisely because I have no easy way to access the ISAM from anything
OTHER THAN COBOL that I had to go for a COBOL generation, and that in
turn,
made me think about the "illusion" of cross platform standardization that
COBOL is supposed to provide...

This "closed" COBOL file system has been one of the major contributors to
the decline of COBOL. I remember certain programmers feeling very smug in
the mid-80s because the corporate data resource was (apparently) locked
into
COBOL and this therefore guaranteed COBOL's future. (I wonder where they
are
now...)



It's a bit much, isn't it, to blame the language for the differing ways that
implementors chose to write their I/O handlers? I don't know that the
standards ever specified how the files should be implemented. For that
matter, how could they have done so? At the very minimum, they'd have had
cope with EBCDIC vs. ASCII, and count-key-data vs. fixed address disk
drives. And that was long before PC days.

Is there any file system or DB system - any file mechanism whatsoever that
is completely platform-independent?

PL


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: How proprietary is the "COBOL file system"
    ... Is there a single PC ISAM system, or do all the COBOL vendors have their ... Use ODBC. ... The requirement is to access around 100 Fujitsu ISAM files. ... The COBOL file system is only closed on PCs and UNIX. ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: Should COBOL be lockedUP for good?...
    ... You are allowing your emotional attachment to COBOL to blind you here. ... isn't wise to do that with ANY language; it is just computer programming, ... Both Richard and Bill have tried to explain their ... You may think it is fine to use the COBOL file system, ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: COBOL file system was Re: Productivity
    ... people that DBMS was a better solution than the COBOL file system. ... inasmuch as VSAM is provided and many of the standard tools can take ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: Cobols File System Vs. RDBMs...
    ... I suspect most CoBOL developers work with mainframe & mini computers. ... So I infer that you find indexed file systems used by Windows based ... You might as well say that Indexed Sequential files on mainframes were ... I agree with you that the COBOL file system is "closed", ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: Closed file system was Re: END-IF
    ... That same nice file system was one of the major nails in COBOL's ... >>COBOL program. ... to the Business if they need to request a report from IT. ... > costs of a relational database over an indexed file irrelevant so that ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)