[Info-vax] COBOL Is Obsolete (was Re: Any stronger versions of the LMF planned ?)

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 9/22/2021 5:38 AM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
>> The specific question being considered here is interfacing from COBOL 
>> to SQL.
> 
> VMS Cobol has the same "embedded SQL" support just as any other compiled
> VMS language such C, Fortran, Basic. No difference at all.
> 
> And VMS Cobol can of course call SQLMOD routines and functions just as
> any other VMS compiled language that follows the VMS Calling Standard.
> 
> So there is nothing special about "interfacing from COBOL to SQL"
> that makes it stand out compared to other (compiled) languages.
> 
> If you compare with scripting languages (Python and such) there is an
> differnce in that the SQL has to be compiled at runtime. A bit less
> efficient then having the SQL compilation done at compile time.

VMS Cobol and Rdb are very well covered with embedded SQL
and SQLMOD.

Other databases are not as well covered. SQLMOD is Rdb specific. And
the number of supported combinations of languages and databases
for embedded SQL is not that big compared to what is out there.

But that is not an indication that embedded SQL would not work
for those combinations. It just reflects that the IT world
in general has moved from embedded SQL towards database
independent call API's and ORM's. And people live with the
overhead (I don't think that the overhead of a call API is
significant, but with ORM a lot happens under the hood).

Arne