Re: COBOL to 4GL convertor

rlm@thehill.chrh.org (Robert Murphy) wrote: > > > We are looking for a COBOL to 4GL translator. Any suggestions of a > source, public, private or contract. > -- > +-------------------------------------------------------------+ > | Robert Murphy Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Hospital | > | rlm@chrh.org Phone: 606/254-5701 | > | FAX: 606/253-2906 | > | Any opinions expressed here are mine, not my employer's | > +-------------------------------------------------------------+ I have some Working Storage xref tools from my latest project if anyone is interested...yes they're free...Robert gracefully declined off-line, but I thought maybe the rest of you might like them... and they are a panacea...( I'm very close to some GOOD swamp land too!--really! ) How they work: Take a WS ( Working Storage ) and roll up your "REDEFINES" into simple data elements. Format each line so it falls within a certain range, with lots of air ( spaces ). The main xref tool documents what to do. If you use a lot of prefixing on your variables, strip off the prefixes: Example: H-ADR-ADDRESS1 and T-ADDRESS1 would be stripped to ADDRESS1. There's some pigs-eye relating going on here but of course we're going to use our friend AWK to create the cross-reference. A flat-file db is going to be created from whence cometh a report. ( By the way AWK is nice when it comes to orphan group printing on the header. I wish INFORMIX had orphan support in their reports but hey life could be worse, I would have to program in COBOL! COBOL doesn't have the NEED ? LINES statement <burp> ) Anyway, once the data-file is generated, a nice report is created. The premise is on you making "tables" out of the sections of your working storage that would appear to look like tables to a relational eye. Since I got lucky on this project with the way the WS is laid out these tools might be a complete waste to you, but you make the call, I enjoyed writing them, and the reports/xref looks great. I even came up with a "dbschema" program from the data file, a "info for tables" style "table" report,a program to create RECORDs for a 4GL program, and a report-code-generator for a report based on the layout of one of every one of the data structures in the WS--the pseudo-tables, which was the goal in the first place. If you have to convert a COBOL "DB" to INFORMIX these might help. A moment of thanks to Aho Wienberger & Kernigan cause they are @#$@#$^&*^ geniuses... Tim Schaefer ps. Netscape News viewer is excellent...just can't put my new signature on the end of the posting darnit.