Re: Developer 2000 / Cobol question

[Quoted] The Oracle Developer software only connects to Oracle.

It is possible but expensive for Oracle to communicate with other databases. If I recall, a
connection between Oracle and Sybase was $12,000 - $15,000. It is called something
like Oracle Open Connection software. The software allows one to use Oracle SQL to
read or write data into the other databases. The connection would appear as just

another database link. The other database cannot see Oracle through the connection.
In addition you may need SQL*Net software for the other database assuming that the machine that it is running on does not already have this software available.

Using Pro*COBOL, it is possible to connect to the Oracle database from within the
COBOL code. The idea is that the code supports creation of connecting to the Oracle
database, generating cursors, fetching data, etc. It is fairly straight forward. I have used
the ProC version, and found it quite useable. The major advantage is that you are still using
the original COBOL code, the connection to Oracle is integrated, and Oracle is providing
the necessary libraries. It is alot cheaper than the Open Connection software. The
developer 2000 with ProC is $3000 for NT per developer seat

In addition, the OCI interface is available. It is a C library, that could be possibly
integrated into the COBOL software assuming that there is a mechanism for introducing
a non-COBOL function set. This is cheapest as it is generally part of the server software.
In the case of the NT version of the server, the OCI library is delivered for free. I personnally
found that the OCI functions to be a bit archaic with numerous apparently unnecessary
arguements for each function. There are third party addon like OTL which is a shareware
library of C functions to hide some of the complexity of the original OCI calls.

Mike Krolewski.

AcsAdmin wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I have a customer who wants to use their existing VAX Cobol and Dibol
> programs with an Oracle backend that runs on Open VMS. I have been told (by
> Oracle) that their existing programs can use the developer 2000 tools in
> order to get connectivity between the existing Vax programs and the new
> Oracle Database.
>
> First, I am wondering if that information is accurate. The person from
> Oracle sounded a little shaky when explaining the technology and I am
> wondering if he was correct. Second, if the Developer 2000 tools will do
> the job, how involved is it to make VAX cobol and dibol programs talk to an
> Oracle server?
>
> Any help is appreciated,
>
> Glenn
Received on Sat Jul 11 1998 - 08:19:35 CEST