RE: Cobol redefine in SQL

Carel-Jan,

Well, go ahead and spoil all our fun. ;)

Seriously though, thanks for posting which part of the fine manual to peruse. If I *knew* COBOL, perhaps I could offer something useful rather than just whining.

Now if anyone needs to move from Data-Flex to Oracle, I can offer some ideas.

Jared

On Thu, 2003-11-27 at 11:44, Carel-Jan wrote:
> At 05:44 27-11-03 -0800, you wrote:
> >I'm looking for a solution that is using only one table not multiple tables.
> >In fact a dynamic column redefinition feature (cobol redefines) is what I
> >need in Oracle SQL.
> >
> >Stephane
>
> Hi Stephane,
>
> Instead of flaming Cobol I'll try help you with a solution. Please download
> the utilities manual, as I advised last time, look at the SQL*Loader part
> and take case study 5. It will tell you exactly what you want. Redefines,
> Occurs, all is covered. I think this will solve your problem. You can have
> as many INTO TABLE clauses as you like, one for each redefine. Every INTO
> TABLE might refer to the same table. The WHEN clause helps you to determine
> what INTO TABLE clause to use.
>
>
> To the others in this thread, IMHO Cobol might not be state of the art,
> whithout it IT might not have been what it is now. I hate the language,
> actually never ever wrote a working program in it due to some mental blocks
> connected with the syntax, but I've done many data-conversions of files,
> based on the record-layouts. Redefines might be ugly, for those of you who
> do not remember the amazing discovery of a 5 MB (spelled MegaByte)
> harddisk, and spending 3 hours discussing with 4 programmers how to use
> this amazing amount of diskspace in a usefull way some hsitorical awareness
> might help. Cobol, coming from the early sixties AFAIK, doesn't support
> null-values. Actually, when they started using it, there were no disks at
> all. Costs of storage were sky-high, and every byte saved was welcome. So,
> redefines, and repeating groups (OCCURS 10 TIMES in a field definition)
> really helped people writing usefull programs, based on serial access to
> data stored on ticker tapes and magnetic tapes. It is about time to get
> some awareness of the history of our trade, before it all fades away.
>
> Visit Miracle's Oracle museum, running Oracle V5 on a 286 / Dos 6.0 system,
> or similar old-fashioned. Do you condemn the T-Ford as well? That doesn't
> meet today's standards, but was most important to the development of a
> certain country in this world.
>
>
> Regards, Carel-Jan
>
> -- There will allwasy be another 10 last bugs --
>
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> Author: Carel-Jan
> INET: cjpengel.dbalert_at_xs4all.nl
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-- 
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-- 
Author: Jared Still
  INET: jkstill_at_cybcon.com

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