[Cobolforgcc-devel] Re: COBOL utilities project
Status: Pre-Alpha
Brought to you by:
timjosling
From: David E. <de...@ar...> - 2002-06-15 03:19:59
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At 10:03 PM 14/06/02 -0400, David A. Cobb wrote: > Tim Josling wrote: > >> David Essex wrote: >> ... >>> How is COBOL4GCC going to deal with indexed files ? >>> Will it also be using DB ? >> >> Probably. I will probably reuse whatever you guys are doing. >> Maybe later on we might do a custom piece but I think DB is >> good enough to start. > > Isn't DB (Berkeley, IIRC) rather overkill? Some of their code, maybe, > but there's a lot more in a DB than is needed for COBOL ISAM. A COBOL > indexed file has an unsurprising similarity to an IBM VS*M file system. > Other than how it manages space allocation and lock management, there's > nothing very sophisticated about VSAM, it's still a 1970's concept. In > contrast, even the simple xBase indexed structure "knows" more about the > structure of the data. In fact, the only thing required of an indexed > file is that the key be the same sequential character positions in every > record -- the records need not even be the same otherwise. That would > drive a DB system bonkers. Berkeley DB maybe overkill, and ISAM maybe a 1970's concept, but unfortunately there are no free nor open source implementation of ISAM. This has been one of the killer problems in many open source COBOL projects. MySQL used a version of ISAM, but recently they converted to DB for the low level structures. So AFIK, DB is the only choice available. The closest implementation of VS*M on UN*X is C-IS*M, which by the way is now owned by I*M. What I would to see is an OpenISAM project with the following criteria. - XOpen ISAM standard conformity. - Low level concurrence file locking. If there are any volunteers who would like to work on this project, then the project is all your. David Essex |