Re: Excel Prototypes for cobol programmers

[Barbara Morris <bmorris@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Scott Klement wrote:
> I don't speak Cobol, but from what I understand, Cobol does not have the 
> ability to call Java methods directly.  (Someone correct me if I'm 
> wrong.)   This means that you'd either have to call the JNI APIs to 
> access the HSSF classes, or you'd have to write all of the code that 
> talks to Java in RPG, and then call the RPG routines from Cobol.

Maybe a bit academic, but COBOL does have the ability to call Java 
methods.   It's similar to calling Java using RPG prior to V5R1.  I 
don't know if you ever tried that, but I'm having a really bad flashback 
right now.  Brrrr.

It's described in chapter 10 of the COBOL Programmer's Guide in the 
section called "COBOL and Java programs".  The layout of the JNI 
function-pointer structure is defined in QSYSINC/QCBLLESRC member JNI.

(I haven't ever tried calling Java from COBOL; I don't speak COBOL well 
enough.)

For sure I would write RPG wrappers to do the Java calls and have COBOL 
call the RPG wrappers.