Greg Stigers wrote:

>Do we feel that HP COBOL compares
>favorably to what other vendors offer for their platforms? OTOH, I am
>glad that I work with IMAGE instead of Oracle. OTOH, even with my
>beloved isolation, if it takes x years of experience to grow and develop
>a library of routines that encapsulate some level of understanding of a
>platform, how long will it take to rediscover these functions on a new
>platform?

Well, I've written in COBOL for practically my entire programming life 
(about 16 years now) on various platforms (mainframe IBM, Unisys, DG, 
Prime, DEC, HP, etc.) and I have to say that HP COBOL compares very 
favorably with the others.  Almost every platform I've coded on uses 
some non-standard code to handle database access and screen I/O.  
Some of them use a pre-processor that converts non-COBOL verbs (like 
FETCH, PUT, etc.) into calls to O/S intrinsics that are very obscure 
to say the least.  At least HP documents their non-standard
implementations.

But, on the subject of learning curves, I've always found it to be 
rather easy to pick up a new platform after reaching a certain level 
of core competency in a language.  For instance, I spent about three 
years learning the intricacies of the Prime computer.  But after that, 
I knew how to handle screens and hierarchal databases.  When I moved 
to a DEC after that, I had to learn RDB, which proved to be relatively 
easy since DEC has canned routines for COBOL access into RDB.  Moving 
to the HP was also easy, since Image is basically a hierarchal data base, 
and the screen I/O is handled via intrinsics (both of which I had 
learned on the Prime).

One thing is consistent across all the platforms I have worked on.  All 
of them had the "standard" way of doing things.  But if you wanted to 
do something quickly and efficiently, you usually had to resort to O/S 
intrinsics, which required some level of understanding of the platform 
itself and not just the language you were using.

Just my $.02 worth.

Jim Phillips                            Manager of Information Systems
E-Mail: [log in to unmask]      Therm-O-Link, Inc.
Phone: (330) 527-2124                   P. O. Box 285
  Fax: (330) 527-2123                   Garrettsville, Ohio  44231