Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!jarthur!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!bionet!agate!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-ses!hpcc01!gph
From: gph@hpcc01.HP.COM (Paul Houtz)
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Re: OO Implementations in COBOL
Message-ID: <9950001@hpcc01.HP.COM>
Date: 28 Feb 90 17:38:22 GMT
References: <19358@grebyn.com>
Organization: HP Corporate Computing Center
Lines: 59

tris@alzabo.uucp (Tris Orendorff) 
>schultz@grebyn.com (Ronald Schultz) writes:
>
>
>>Many consultants are stating to us poor MIS types that object-
>>oriented analysis and possibly design are implementable in even
>>the unholiest of languages, ie. COBOL.  Is an object-oriented
>>design implementable in COBOL?  If so, how?
>> ...
>
>	I think that it would be possible to add OO to COBOL.  However,
>my real question is: Will anyone use it?
>	One of the benefits of OO is being able to share code.  MIS
>shops don't know the meaning of the word share.  That's why there is 70
>billion lines of code.  Everybody started out from scratch 20 years ago
>and has build up proprietary routines to get their work done.
>	This may also explain why there is no comp.lang.cobol or
>alt.cobol for people to share COBOL information.  The computing centers
>are all closed environments and will probably stay that way until they
>are shut down (fat chance). 
>
>				Sincerely Yours
>				Tris Orendorff
>				tris@alzabo.uucp

  Tris, you have worked in some interesting COBOL shops, I guess?

  I have worked in and with a fair number of COBOL based MIS departments.

  My experience is that COBOL programmers are actually just the same type
  of people as any other programmer (a revolutionary idea, I know), and
  that many of them understand the value of code sharing.   In fact, I 
  was more likely to steal COBOL code than to write it because it is so
  typing intensive.

  There is an incredibly obvious reason why there are few COBOL notes
  groups;  Very few COBOL environments are Unix environments, so they
  are not going to be connected to the network.

  It is simply not true that COBOL computing centers are closed environments;
  they simply are not connected to the particular network you rely on.
  Actually, many of them are converting to unix and using such products as
  the MicroFocus COBOL Compiler to do development and production on Unix
  systems.   MF COBOL is used by SUN, HP, and other vendors as their COBOL
  solution for the business computing environment.

  I expect you will see more COBOL, not less, in the future.

  As for the object oriented use of COBOL, I myself can see no reason why
  object oriented priciples used in COBOL would have poor performance.  
  I would think that COBOL would be an IDEAL language for Object Oriented
  design.   It is difficult to pass many different data types to sub
  programs in COBOL, and it is much easier to pass messages in the form
  of strings.

  Also, the Paragraph Structure of COBOL is a very low overhead implementation
  that would allow a subprogram to have many private routines to use to
  access a data structure, and hiding of the data structure is easier in
  a COBOL subprogram than revealing it.