My knowledge is very old, but when I programmed in Cobol, the 'database' was nothing but 'bytes on the disk'. The definition of the fields were in the Cobol program. For those younger folks who know about sql, fox, etc, there was nothing in the 'database' that would give you a clue about where the data was. It gets worse. Cobol allows overlaying data. I could have a 128 byte record, bytes 21-26 could be ASCII text and in a different record it could be a floating point. Again, the definition was in the Cobol code. There would be one byte (for example) that would tell you how to interpret that record. In other words, without the code, you could have a very hard time working with the data. Back in the old days, disk space and memory was extremely expensive so you had to do a lot of dirty tricks in order to have a large database with reasonable access times. I code for healthcare. I remember packing the diagnosis codes into binary so that we did not have to use 6 bytes. Hope that is clear.
This seems like a good opportunity for California to get some bids from ADP, Intuit, etc for a payroll program. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kevin Cully" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <profox@leafe.com> Sent: Friday, December 05, 2008 8:21 AM Subject: Re: [NF] Amusement I guess that's an interesting question. What were the common databases used with Cobol in its heyday? DB2 perhaps? I sure don't know. -Kevin CULLY Technologies, LLC Kenneth Kixmoeller wrote: > The COBOL is probably the UI to the database, and (as I'm sure every > bureaucrat facing a huge pay cut will tell you): "That is the only > way to do it! (So *there*, Gov.)" [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
