Re: Recursion in Standard (was: string to correct integer

William M. Klein wrote:
The most commonly used MAJOR extension in IBM's recent COBOL
compilers is its "native" XML support. It would seem to me that SOME
of the sites that might want to look at a Fujitsu conversion may be
the sites that have used this feature.

The feature of "IS RECURSIVE" which started this discussion, has been
used by some customers, but is certainly not universal. Local-Storage, on
the other hand, is relatively common (as it gets
"storage" from a different place under LE than Working-Storage does).
I think that Fujitsu does support this in non-OO programs, so it
shouldn't be a problem.
The other issue, of course, is that more and more IBM mainframe COBOL
programs are using LE callable services. I know that Micro Focus had
"emulators" for these, but I don't think that Fujitsu does. This
wouldn't be a problem for converting "source code" but would be for
converting applications.

In much the same way that both Micro Focus and Fujitsu provided support for
"COBOL subroutines"...?

This comes back to my point previously about the future being in objects and
layers. A callable service can be emulated in a different environment and
the impact for conversion is minimised when it is separated to a "service
layer"

***

As for why I think that Fujitsu has NOT be staying current (besides
lack of "IS RECURSIVE" support and EXEC XML support), up until this
year, I stayed current on my Fujitsu maintenance and was very careful
in reading their LRM and "What's new" documentation and saw that they
did NOT include any "new" IBM dialect features in any of their
releases.

I believe you :-)

My question was "Why?" We can only speculate. Are they winding down their
COBOL efforts? Do they just think it isn't important? Are they finding it
non-cost-effective to "keep up"? Who knows?

Many of the "post-LE" IBM extensions were "relatively
common" extensions (e.g. PROCEDURE-POINTER) and I think that Fujitsu
may have those already (for their own use). However, when IBM made
changes (such as SET ADDRESS for working-storage items, changed size
limits for GLOBs and BLOBs for SQL, etc) I never saw that Fujitsu
kept current (while MF did).

Doesn't BASED STORAGE achieve that? (I've never used it, so not sure...)

William M. Klein wrote:
I *seriously* question that Fujitsu's "toolset" will work with any
COBOL code that relies on COBOL features that were introduced in
IBM COBOL for z/OS V3 or later (i.e. at least the last 5 releases
of IBM mainframe COBOL).

I haven't used them so I have no first hand knowledge. On paper the
toolset looks good and they have some glowing comments from
customers who HAVE used them.

As for "keeping up" with IBM, why do you suppose they haven't ? (if
they haven't...)

On the other hand, the chances are relatively good (in my opinion)
that those shops trying to use the Fujitsu product are probably the
very shops that haven't kept current on their IBM mainframe
compilers either. So this may be a "good match" between product and
perspective users.

Maybe. I'm wondering how much of a "show-stopper" this is likely to
be... Can you think of any major things that have happened in the last 5
IBM releases?

Pete.
--
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."

Thanks for this post, Bill. It is interesting.

Pete.

--
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."


.

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