Cobol Accept date VS Db2 Current time stamp

pmvino · New User Joined: 22 Aug 2008 Posts: 20 Location: india

Hi,

I am writing a cobol-DB2 stored procedure. I need current date and time in the program.

Which one is the best for CPU utilisation
1) ACCEPT WS-CURRENT-DATE FROM DATE
ACCEPT WS-CURRENT-TIME FROM TIME

or

2) EXEC SQL SET :CURR-TIME = CURRENT_TIMESTAMP END-EXEC

Thanks,
Vinodh P M

Robert Sample · Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2012 9:17 pm

Why do you care about CPU utilization? Unless you are executing your code BILLIONS or TRILLIONS of times, the difference in execution time will be so small you couldn't tell the difference. Current COBOL compiled code executes tens or even hundreds of millions of COBOL statements per second of CPU time on z machines, so worrying about CPU utilization is completely archaic and obsolete -- unless the program is discovered to have a problem. Such a problem, however, would NOT be with using ACCEPT versus the database to get date / time.

Invoking the database to get date / time would tend to use more overall CPU since the ACCEPT statements are 30 pseudo-assembler instructions using the COBOL V3R4 compiler. However, if you have coded your program to use one or the other, don't change it since you would use more CPU time to recompile the code than you are likely to save in years of execution.

Craq Giegerich · Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2012 9:32 pm

With accept there is a very slight chance that the date could change between the two calls so you would end up with time that doesn't go with the date.

Bill Woodger · Posted: Sat Oct 06, 2012 4:56 am

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Sat Oct 06, 2012 9:29 pm

time-stamping is a peeve of many auditors usually ending in a <religion> war

according to many of them all the <events> of a process should have the <same> timestamp in order to be able to relate them

the picky ones sometimes insist on two timestamps one related to the <process> and one related to the <event>
the double time-stamp might make sense significant when there are <concurrent> updates
from different <sources> and one process spans a looong time interval

where a process is a unit of work, an online transaction or a batch program

NahuelTori · New User Joined: 29 Sep 2008 Posts: 9 Location: Argentina

With the SQL command, you have to had the spacial care to control the SQLCODE of the execution. It is common to have this as the first SQL command executed in the program, leading to possible unreacheable Abends due to -805 bind errors.

Terry Heinze · Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 1:16 am

The precision needed of date and time might be the deciding factor as to which ones you choose.

Anuj Dhawan · Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 2:51 pm

I agree with Robert that unless you are executing your code BILLIONS or TRILLIONS of times, the difference in execution time will be so small you couldn't tell the difference.

However, with the information in hand read is as the only DB2 statement in the program is for TIMESTAMP, choose: