XML and COBOL

[Ken North]

Steven Marcus wrote:

<< If you are running a relatively recent release of OS/390 (not
MVS) you can use an XML parser written in Java. IBM's java
parser is available at alphaworks.ibm.com and supports
EBCDIC<->Unicode conversions.

You can integrate your COBOL and Java environments thru the file
system bridge available with java-OS/390, or via DB/2. There may
be other ways of passing data between Java apps and COBOL but
someone else will have to speak up.

Steven,

The issue isn't being able to bridge data and files, but being able to
process information in memory. The forthcoming DB2 XML Extender will
include the capability of bridging XML files and mapping them to DB2
columns. That's not the problem.

The problem is working with in-memory structures to process document
objects or events. The extant XML parsers support the Document Object
Model (DOM) and SAX (events). If you use a Java XML parser that targets
DOM, for example, it produces an object structure Java understands, but
not COBOL. You'd have to write a library that interfaces COBOL to Java
objects using CALLs, not disk READs and WRITEs.

Not an easy proposition -- unless someone has implemented Object COBOL
with bindings for IDL, Java, etc.


================== Ken North =============================
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Ken_North
ken_north at csi.com  71301.1306 at compuserve.com  KenNorth at msn.com
Ken North Computing   2604B El Camino Real, #351 Carlsbad, CA 92008-1214
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