At 12:52 PM 5/5/98 +0000, Mark Landin wrote:
>On Fri, 01 May 1998 16:07:22 +0200, Chris Breemer
><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>>This might be a real dumb question, but :
>>
>>If I want to access TurboIMAGE data from a COBOL program, do I have
>>to use DB* intrinsics or can I do it using the standard COBOL  I/O
>>commands ?
>>
>>TIA.
>
>You should probably use the DB intrinsics. However, if all you want to
>do is serial read a particular dataset, and have proper priveleges
>(PM, I think) you CAN open a dataset like a normal file and read it
>using the COBOL file I/O routines. However, you certainly can't write
>to the datasets this way, and you can't take advantage of search
>values, chains, etc.

I would *strongly* recommend that you utilize the DBxxxx intrinsics and
not try and walk the datasets yourself.  You'd have to check bit maps,
deblock records, skip over pointer areas and other esoteric things
to get at the data properly.  Not to mention being able to
execute without conflicting IMAGE's concurrent use of the set, etc.
Not something for a COBOL application.  Besides, if you think using the
intrinsics take too much coding, just wait till you start writing
your own code to manage all of what IMAGE is doing on your behalf,
safely and efficiently.....!



/jf
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                        Tuesday, May 5th

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