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RE: New development in Cobol or PL/SQL - please help

From: <Rick_Cale_at_teamhealth.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 06:19:18 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.005058A7.20021118061918@fatcity.com>

Babette,

If they are a Cobol shop then there is nothing wrong with using Pro*Cobol. I disagree with your statement about using PL/SQL for the business logic. I personally think you should put as much of that in the database.

Rick

                                                                                                           
                    "Mercadante,                                                                           
                    Thomas F"              To:     Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L                    
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                    ate.ny.us>             cc:                                                             
                    Sent by:               Subject:     RE: New development in Cobol or PL/SQL - please    
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                    Please respond                                                                         
                    to ORACLE-L                                                                            
                                                                                                           
                                                                                                           




Babette,

The decision really comes down to the organization. If they see themselves as *never* leaving the Cobol arena, and they have an ample supply of Cobol programmers, then they should stay with it.

What you could do is to make friends with the applications people, and show them how PL/SQL works. What you will find is that they will take to PL/SQL like a fish to water. And pretty soon, more and more PL/SQL packages will be written that are simply called by the Cobol programs. Cobol would then be a simple entry point to the database - able to interface nicely with the operating system (reading and writing flat files, producing reports and forms), while the majority of the logic may be written in PL/SQL.

Maybe, just maybe, the person making the decision see's no benefit to using PL/SQL. And given your local labor market, maybe he's right!

Tom Mercadante
Oracle Certified Professional

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2002 1:18 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

"Khedr, Waleed" wrote:
>
> Cobol! Again!:(
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: Friday, November 15, 2002 5:24 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
>
> I just found out today that we have a major development initiative that
is
> starting and they are planning on using Pro*Cobol to develop the
> application. (my head is still shaking in disbelief!!!)
>
> So we will have a Java front-end, invoking MQ series that will go across
to
> the mainframe for MQ series to invoke Pro*Cobol programs that will then
do
> the processing (accessing data and doing calculations) and then return
data.
>
> If anyone has been in this or a similar situation, please help.
> I need some really good arguments as to why we should put the business
logic
> into PL/SQL instead of Pro*Cobol.
>
> I understand the reason we are using Oracle is that the director has 15
> years experience with it and loves it. Aaargh!!!
>
> thanks
> Babette
>

May I play the devil's advocate? Even if Pro*Cobol seems to be a weird choice, there may be a case for not coding the logic in PL/SQL : database portability. I have heard recently of a very, very, very big company dumping Oracle in favour of DB2. Reason ? Cost. I guess that in such a case, porting a Pro*Cobol program is easier than PL/SQL.

--
Regards,

Stephane Faroult
Oriole Software
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Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
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Author: Stephane Faroult
  INET: sfaroult_at_oriole.com

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  INET: Rick_Cale_at_teamhealth.com

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Received on Mon Nov 18 2002 - 08:19:18 CST

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