On Mon, 2 Oct 2017 13:02:24 -0500, Elardus Engelbrecht ([email protected]) wrote about "Re: Sort Question" (in <4916708819685726.wa.elardus.engelbrechtsita.co...@listserv.ua.edu>):
[snip] > AFAIK, COBOL has its own internal SORT functions, It does not. Both PL/I and COBOL use the SORT or ICEMAN module from the linklist for their sort interfaces. > but if I want to sort something big or complex, I would terminate my > COBOL program, let sort it with DFSORT or SyncSort and do same or > other COBOL program to process the sorted data. > > If it is not too big or complex to sort, I can let COBOL call DFSORT > and wait for sorted data to come back. Unless your COBOL code is huge, it makes little difference to the performance of the sort. Just use the SORT verb in COBOL or the PLISRTx() subroutines in PL/I; they will perform just the same as a separate sort step. You need to remember to set the appropriate memory parameters in PLSIRTx() or set the COBOL special registers so that the sort can use as much memory as it needs. These compiler language interfaces have all the facilities of DF/SORT available, including the SORTPARM DD card stream. >> Does DFSORT rely on QSAM or on idiosyncratic EXCP? I'd expect > that in the era of oscillating merge it relied on EXCP. > > AFAIK, DFSORT has its own OCO access method(s) just like RACF has > its own OCO way to access the RACF database. DF/SORT has used EXCP since it was called SORT/360. Note that if SORTIN or SORTOUT is a VSAM cluster, it will use normal VSAM for reading or writing, but SORTWKxx spill files are accessed by raw channel programs (at least when the default BLOCKSET algorithm is used). -- Regards, Dave [RLU #314465] *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* [email protected] (David W Noon) *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
