Todd Burch wrote:
... what would be a good place to start with his self study?
I've been "around" cobol (ok, COBOL) for years, and some of the cobol today
looks a lot different than the cobol of the early '80s.
I see on IBM's web site Enterprise COBOL for z/OS V3R4, so I'm guessing this
is the latest and greatest.
We offer a self-study option (since most shops only have
small training needs these days, it seems) we call Remote
Contact Training (or, of course, RCT).
You can take most of our courses on an RCT basis. You sign
up and we send you the setup instructions for the labs (you
will be running the labs on your own installation's computer)
and a copy of the course handout. We also assign you to a
course mentor (usually the course author). At that point,
you go through the book at your own pace, running the labs
on your own system. The mentor is there, by email or phone,
to answer questions, provide hints, and evaluate your
solutions.
You take the course at your own pace, so a two-day course,
say, could be taken over a week or a month, whatever your
work schedule permitted / required.
Info on the details of RCT may be found on our website at:
http://www.trainersfriend.com/Policies/RCT_OverView.htm
In the case you are talking about, I would recommend the course
we call "Enterprise COBOL Update I: Essentials". This two day
course is an update of the changes to COBOL from COBOL II on,
through Enterprise COBOL 3.4. Course details are found at:
http://www.trainersfriend.com/COBOL_Courses/d704descr.htm
I would like to write on z/OS, and run on z/OS, but in doing so, I want to
be able port what knowledge I do gain to Windows as well. I've written OO
code before, so I'm not opposed to jumping into OO COBOL with both feet if
that's the best approach.
Oh. Well, the above course deals with just COBOL as a language;
an OO COBOL course is in the queue, but it may be a while before
it's ready.
IBM has a COBOL compiler for Windows, so any code you write, OO
or non-OO, is portable. There are also other COBOL compilers for
Windows: MicroFocus and Fujitsu to name two; the COBOL FAQ lists
others.
I'm interested in both "batch" processes and interactive. Is there a common
GUI interface? When coding on z/OS, should I set my sights on only using
USS?
For the z/OS world, there is no GUI, right? For interactive,
you can code COBOL that runs under TSO, CICS, IMS, or z/OS
UNIX. I would not set my sights on only using z/OS UNIX (the
acronym police will get you for using "USS", even though IBM
uses it in a number of places).
There is also the "WebSphere Developer for zSeries" (WD/z) product
that supports both the host and workstation compilers: you
can code using WD/z; you can compile on the workstation (if
you have the IBM workstation compiler) or the host; you can
test on the workstation or the host.
To interact, you can use "display" and "accept", calls to
z/OS UNIX services, or calls to C functions (printf, scanf).
Not all of these are necessarily portable. Of course, if
you are interacting under CICS or IMS you would use those
products mechanisms, same for TSO/ISPF; there is a CICS
product for the workstation but I don't believe there is
a true IMS or ISPF workstation platform for you.
There is a "screen" facility for workstation COBOL, but I
do not believe that carries over to the host at all.
My objectives of this code will be to exercise DB2 on z/OS, from near (z/OS)
and afar (Windows). Utilmately, I would like to run the same application on
both (either) z/OS or Windows. Am I shooting too far?
Should be doable. Design apps to separate the interaction, processing,
and data base access functionality, so you can replace those parts
that are different, if necessary.
Or, am I barking up the wrong "language" tree, and need to be using Java or
C++ instead?
Well, those languages will also work. Again, there are issues
that require separation of functionality so you can replace
parts as needed. The biggest difference between running your
app on the host and the workstation will be EBCDIC vs ASCII vs
Unicode strings.
Hope this helps.
Kind regards,
-Steve Comstock
The Trainer's Friend, Inc
http://www.trainersfriend.com
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