[Info-vax] COBOL Is Obsolete (was Re: Any stronger versions of the LMF planned ?)

[Lawrence D’Oliveiro]

On Wednesday, September 22, 2021 at 9:38:28 PM UTC+12, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:

> 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.

The bottleneck is invariably in the actual query execution, not the compilation. That’s why a large corporation like Facebook can serve billions of active users with an infrastructure centred around MySQL and PHP. Not that I’m saying I like PHP ...

>> COBOL was born back in the era of ISAM files, and never really adapted to 
>> the widespread adoption of SQL and relational databases.
>
> That is a complete BS, of course. As anyone really understanding 
> these matters understand.

Let me repeat the example I started this discussion with, namely constructing a where-clause from a set of input field values in Python with something like

	where_clause = " and ".join \
	  (
		"%s = %s" % (field_name, format_sql_value(params[field_name]))
		for field_name in params
		if params[field_name] != ""
	  )

(i.e. only filter on fields where the user actually entered a value).

Try doing the same in COBOL, and you might understand better what I mean.