Re: New Mainframe Blog Site -- mainframeblogger.com

In article <s09e14dbm105nki5c77lmi88echgm7r846@xxxxxxx>,
Howard Brazee <howard@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:00:06 -0700 (PDT), spam.trap.4646@xxxxxxxxx
wrote:

Do COBOL programmers still write report programs in some shops? I
haven't written one in at least 10 years, and I've been working in the
IBM mainframe world all of that time. All of our reports are produced
by QMF, or, if intended for customers, via AFP.

Sure. I added a traditional report to an extract program yesterday.

I tried to post this yesterday but it went... someplace else... so I'll
try again.

On my current site I'm doing payroll processing on a system that got its
start in the late 1970s and functions, more-or-less, as though nothing has
changed. The shop 'aged' in the late 1990s and everybody retired... and
then got re-hired as contractors for Y2K... and then got fired again...
and then got re-contracted when portions of the processing were to be
outsourced in 2005... and then got re-fired again.

What's left is extraordinarily unsophisticated and primitive, mostly
internal SORTs and flat-file match/merge processing... there is one, count
'em, one VSAM KSDS with an alternate index that was instituted in 2004...
a couple-three indexed files with a primary key and everything else is
flat files with multiple record types.

(there is also, of course, no Business Analysis or Requirements Protocol)

I've been keeping myself amused by doing as much as I can in DFSort,
reports included.

DD

.