On Fri, 24 Mar 1995 15:26:08 GMT Gary Peck said:
>Does anyone have any experience writing COBOL programs that use
>subprograms.  The problem I have is that our univeristy bought a
>degree audit program that was originally written for an IBM mainframe
>that has the main driver program and 101 subprograms that are called
>from the main driver.  About 10 of these subprograms have needed to
>be modified to access our image databases holding our student information
>and degree audit information.  With the size of this program, I am
>looking at anyway to possible speed processing up.
 
The most straightforward approach would be to use "nested" programs and
declare your Image areas GLOBAL in the driver program.  This way you can
include the subprograms after the main, and refer to the globals in the
driver.  The database will already be opened (and defined, etc) to the
subprogram and you can follow "traditional" subprogram structure instead
of the old standalone-except-LINKAGE-variables COBOL method.
 
>If anyone has any ideas on how I could speed up the performance, or If it
>is even possible to open the database once in the subprogram and keep it
>open for future processing your help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Don't think that way.  Look into the nested programming techniques in the
newer COBOL-II/iX manual -- it was a fairly recent addition (well, a few
years ago).  It is a welcome breath of fresh air for this musty language.
 
[\] Jeff Kell, [log in to unmask]