Paul,

I can do you one better.  For the majority of business programming
situations a good COBOL and COGNOS  (Powerhouse QUIZ, QUICK & QTP)
programmer would out produce a COBOL only programmer nearly every time. 
The same could be said for the other 4GLs.

In addition:
As I recall COBOL subroutines could be called as functions by QUICK (the
interactive screen language) and QUIZ too.   To my knowledge it was rarely
done but some kind of option like that was supported.  Some of the other
products had similar capabilities.
    More common for complex reporting was to have a COBOL or, in the case
of ASK MANMAN, Fortran program do the more complex algorithms and then
pass the data on for QUIZ to finish.

As for me, I'm proud to remember that at one time things I had said at
Powerhouse user group meetings ended up on the agenda at meetings at
COGNOS headquarters.
   At one time I lobbied customers to complain to the vendor about the
vagueness and/or incompleteness of the language spec.  If not for their
people then for the consultants they hired for the complicated jobs.

   And yet  ...   during all those years when I fancied myself somewhat of
a Cognos Powerhouse Guru I never suffered mental confusion about proofs
of existence.

- Cortlandt Wilson
   www.cortsoft.com

> I would have to disagree. If one is going to develop a full-blown
> system, and not just write a couple of simple reports.  A good COBOL
> programmer will run circles around a COGNOS system!
> I've never used Speedware, so I cannot speak to that one, but I would
> guess it would be about the same.
>
> Now my frustration is with BRW - The one think I liked about COGNOS was
> that one can text up a program, print it out, run searches on it.  You
> cannot do that with BRW - the commands are not stored in a text file,
> but a specially formatted file type.  And you cannot search within it
> for where are variable might be used.    Or at least you won't get a
> very pretty printout if you do try to search.  But it isn't easy trying
> to figure out where something might be defined.
>
> James B. Byrne wrote:
>> Arguments about what to call PowerHouse or Speedware products are
>> pointless. If not 4GL then what?  For transaction processing with a
>> DBMS back-end both families are certainly head and shoulders more
>> efficient with a programmer's time than COBOL, Fortran, Algol, APL,
>> BASIC, C++, Java, Ruby, Perl, PHP, and whatever else the cat has
>> coughed up this week, can ever hope to be.  Whatever else PH or SW
>> might be I would not lump either in with that pile of worms.
>>
>>
>
> --
> Paul D. Christensen
> 16777 Cty Rd 4 - PO Box 369
> Osakis MN 56360-0369
> 320-859-3477 - home
> 320-766-3067 - cell
> 952-767-4347 - work
>
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