I'd vote for administration of a Cluebat to tender areas.

Jerry Whitteridge
Manager Mainframe Systems & Storage
Albertsons - Safeway Inc.
623 869 5523
Corporate Tieline - 85523

If you feel in control
you just aren't going fast enough.



-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf 
Of John McKown
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2016 8:25 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: EXTERNAL: 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

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