Re: COBOL/ILE questions

["Jon Paris" <Jon.Paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > So if these routines have to be rewritten, what language would be best
suited?

> From IBM's perspective, C is the "machine language" of the System i.  The
results of a C compilation can be bound as function/procedure calls into
your COBOL programs which is another reason to use it.  Some may tell you to
use MI, but it is not bindable and since it is a platform specific language,
learning it has no value on any platform except the System i.  Besides, the
vast majority of MI instructions that you might ever need to use are
surfaced as function calls in the C compiler and compiled as built-ions and
hence are very efficient.

That said - you need to consider whether you really need to do this stuff in
"assembler" - the optimizer used by ILE COBOL is far superior to that used
on the mainframe COBOL as far as I know - I would tend to convert the
assembler to COBOL as a first cut and then to C if needed.  You may also
find that many of the functions you need are available as COBOL intrinsics
or as callable APIs.  If you give us a list of the type of functions you are
currently running in assembler we can point you in the right direction.

Jon Paris
Partner400

www.Partner400.com