I think they have a letter from the estate for their use, but even that
letter has got to be really old. Last time I mentioned XBOL, someone
mentioned they were still running it on z/OS. (My client is z/VSE.)
It's really a crappy language. All the variables are a combination of a
letter and a sequential number. But, it generates both batch and CICS
code without having to know much about CICS.
Tony Thigpen
Farley, Peter x23353 wrote on 4/5/21 2:00 PM:
Interesting. I would presume your client received the source due to an escrow
clause in the original contract. Any chance the original XBOL developer's
estate would allow the product to be open-sourced for community development?
Or is it abandonware at this point?
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of
Tony Thigpen
Sent: Monday, April 5, 2021 1:03 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Meta languages [was: RE: Assembler Language Programming for IBM
System z Servers]
I am helping support a customer that has XBOL which generates COBOL. The
original developer has passed away, but my client has the source. We have had
to make changes for 'gone' COBOL verbs and such.
I don't think CA's MetaCobol is currently marketed. I talked to them several
years ago about it.
I personally wrote and use a COBOL "pre-compiler" that handles a few things for
me:
1) It let's you specify Working Storage, Linkage Section and Procedural Section
in any COBOL copybook. It re-orders the generated code so that the parts are
plugged into the output source in the right order. This makes it easy to put
things like date routines within the program when such routines require working
storage fields to do their calculations.
2) It calls 'calls' the CICS pre-processor before generating the final code.
z/VSE does not have such an option currently.
I do have some more I want to do with it, but have not had the time. I would like it to
be more "macro like" for such things as BMS screens.
Tony Thigpen
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