Clark Morris asks: >Does EGL generate any better code than the awful spaghetti >GO TO laden COBOL code of CSP?
"Do not look directly into the sun." :-) Kind of missing the point. Generated code isn't supposed to be pretty, maintained, or even looked at. If you want to write "beautiful" COBOL, write beautiful COBOL! (Are you volunteering aesthetic duties for the original poster? :-)) For that matter, write beautiful Assembler or machine code if you don't like what your compiler generates. If you want to write EGL, write EGL. They're different programming languages, that's all. Vive la différence. The original poster already has CSP because, for whatever reason(s), past/present/future, at least one group of developers (users?) didn't want to write COBOL, PL/I, FORTRAN, Assembler, Java, Perl, PHP, REXX, or RPG code (to pick some examples). And presumably they've got a large (and perhaps growing) portfolio of CSP code. Only EGL protects that investment. Think of it as CSP Version 12 if you like. (Version 4 was the last version of CSP.) There are some differences between Version 4 and Version 12 -- ahem, CSP and EGL. One difference: CSP generates intermediate COBOL (only) on your mainframe while EGL generates your choice of COBOL or Java (or both) on your PC or Mac with Rational Developer for System z, Rational EGL Community Edition (Java only), etc. Consequently there is no generator license or generator processing required on your mainframe -- just the EGL runtime libraries (for COBOL) plus COBOL compiler (per normal), and/or the Java runtime environment. In CSP terms, if you're using the COBOL runtime with EGL you would only need the "AE" kit (plus an LPAR somewhere with the COBOL compiler), not the "AD" kit. Another difference is 20 years of enhancements and improvements: to the language's capabilities, the developer tools (graphical! Eclipse!), vastly increased user interface support (including "Web 2.0" browsers and mobile devices), support for more runtimes, and so on. You can use as much or as little of that new functionality as you wish. Yet another different: EGL is supported. Good stuff. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples Resident Enterprise Architect (Based in Singapore) E-Mail: timothy.sipp...@us.ibm.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
