Do they care about efficiency? Chances are that the vendor supplied routines are going to be more efficient than home-written routines.
-----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John McKown Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2016 9:25 AM To: [email protected] Subject: how to: convince programmer something else is better. I'm having a bit of a problem convincing a COBOL programmer to "not do" something because, IMO, there is a better way. However, it almost seems like he is not hearing me. Some background. We have an in-house written RLE blank compression routine which we use for some selected data sets. These data sets are known to have large sequences of blanks in the records. We have used this program for over 25 years (it was here when I came here). So this predates SMS compression by a couple of decades. It was also used because, back in that day, VSAM KSDS data sets were limited to 2 GiB. Oh, the program is written in HLASM. Well, we are getting off of z/OS to Wintel. Regardless of cost and time. "So let it be written. So let it be done!" As part of this, we will need to uncompress the data and transfer it to Windows. There are no problems with that (other than screams from the SAN people about the size of the resultant files). Part of this is using MicroFocus COBOL to do some of the work (i..e port the COBOL programs to Windows). The aforementioned programmer wants a COBOL version of the HLASM compression and decompression routines. In fact, he has written the decompression routine. He wants me to write a COBOL version of the compression routine. Which I am working on. This is being done "just in case" they are needed (i.e. the SAN people scream long & hard enough about space issues). However, MicroFocus supplies 3 different compression routines which can be called from COBOL. What I'm trying to convince the programmer to do is write the Wintel COBOL versions of the compression routines to take the same parameters as they have historically, but to call the MIcroFocus routines within them to do the actual compression and decompression. But, again, it is like he is just not hearing me. Do any of the COBOL programmers out there have any idea how I can phrase this information so that it makes better sense to him? I.e. convince him that using the vendor compression routines, via a compatible interface routine, is the way to go? -- Heisenberg may have been here. http://xkcd.com/1770/ Maranatha! <>< John McKown ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN The information contained in this message is confidential, protected from disclosure and may be legally privileged. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, distribution, copying, or any action taken or action omitted in reliance on it, is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this message and destroy the material in its entirety, whether in electronic or hard copy format. Thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
