Best Practices for Enterprise COBOL

prino · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 12:42 am

OMG

, am I happy that I've only ever used PL/I...

don.leahy · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 3:21 am

Bill O'Boyle · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 3:31 am

I was a pioneer in the early 1980's, with Credit Card Software (Orlando, FL), which then became PaySys International and we had a standards committee (I was on it), that reviewed source code and ensured it met our requirements. If it didn't, then it was returned to do it right.

Because of these standards, all of our COBOL programs were the same, no one deviated or got "cute" with their code.

I was once told that programs need to be constructed, so they read like a book and the thousands of CCS programs met this.

Developing standards is site-dependent, but as has been expressed earlier, when you write a program, remember the next person that needs to come along and perform maintenance.

Regards,

Bill

Author of the PaySys Real Time Authorization Product "FAS".

dbzTHEdinosauer · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 2:09 pm

i have stayed out of this topic because most have been subjected to my ranting and raving about standards.

instead, I will supply a bunch of edit macros that I use during analysis and modification of programs.

simply upload the txt file to an 80 column ps or pds member
and following the instructions.

i attempted to "comment" adequately to give a sense of what the macro/script accomplishes.

there are few if any comments about how the instructions work or why.

Bill Woodger · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 2:28 pm

Wow, dbz, a treasure-trove.

I like ID DIVISION, by the way.

Bill Woodger · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 2:46 pm

PeterHolland · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 2:51 pm

Another quote of Dijkstra :

PL/I --"the fatal disease"-- belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.

PeterHolland · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 2:54 pm

Another one :

The problems of business administration in general and data base management in particular are much too difficult for people that think in IBMerese, compounded with sloppy English.

I like the bold part of previous statement.

Nic Clouston · Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 7:56 pm

PL/1 - so much better than COBOL (but I started with Pl/1) and enough different ways of doing things to keep people happy.

Bill Woodger · Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2011 4:08 am

I do hope they don't mind, but there is a good example today of the problem with comments, here.

Probably due to site standards, the poor thing is in a debugger, and there are so many comments that there is not a line of procedure code on the screen. And probably more comments on most of the next one, as the para numbers are only up to 1000.

To me, it does not look as though the comments are likely to add a single piece of information beyond what anyone is capable of getting just by looking at the compile listing.

And the code is always right, in the sense it that it dictates what happens. These sort of comments just get in the way.

Ed Goodman · Active Member Joined: 08 Jun 2011 Posts: 556 Location: USA

Susan,
You should keep in mind that this person probably really believes it's true. If they need this level of consistency to make things easier for them, then so be it.

The tough part for me when I first hit this type of thinking was realizing that these programs have to stand the test of time. Almost any standard is good, as long as everyone follows it. It certainly makes things easier when you have to pick up an old program and try to figure it out.