Difference b/w JCL Sort and Cobol Sort

abhicet2003 · New User Joined: 16 Nov 2005 Posts: 21

Hi All,
Can anyone please tell me the difference b/w JCL Sort and Cobol Sort. Which one is faster and better.

Thanks

Rupesh.Kothari · Member of the Month Joined: 27 Apr 2005 Posts: 463

HI,

IQofaGerbil · Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 3:00 pm

Sort utilities are generally more efficient, especially if you are sorting large amounts of data, it really depends on your requirements.

ralph_v · New User Joined: 07 Jul 2005 Posts: 27

External SORT is always faster because Internal Sort takes the help of external sort for sorting purpose.

Frank Yaeger · Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 8:56 pm

A JCL sort invokes DFSORT (or another sort product if you don't use DFSORT) directly.

A COBOL sort uses the COBOL SORT statement to invoke DFSORT.

So both methods use DFSORT. If the COBOL sort uses the FASTSRT option which lets DFSORT read and write the files directly, the two methods will be essentially equivalent. If the COBOL sort does not use the FASTSRT option, then COBOL will read and write the files and pass them to DFSORT via exits, which can be less efficient than having DFSORT read and write the files directly. Also, if the COBOL program has its own code to do things that DFSORT can do with control statements (e.g. INCLUDE, OMIT, etc) instead of using the DFSORT control statements, it may be less efficient.

For more information on this, see Chapter 6 of "z/OS DFSORT Tuning Guide" at:

publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/ICE1CT00/6.0?DT=20031124135012

riyas · New User Joined: 17 Mar 2006 Posts: 1

I think sorting through JCL may be more efficient than the other one. Because its given through the job itself. It also depends upon you,whether you have to sort through JCL or through COBOL according to your convinience and the situation where you need sorting to be done.