[Info-vax] COBOL Is Obsolete (was Re: Any stronger versions of the LMF planned ?)

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 9/22/2021 8:49 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> 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).

https://www.vajhoej.dk/arne/articles/vmsdb.html

has examples of how to access Rdb/MySQL/SQLite/Mimer on
VMS from C/Pascal/Fortran/Cobol/Java/C#/Python/PHP on
VMS/Windows/*nix (for the subset of possible combinations).

Arne