Advantages of PL/1 Language over cobol and vice versa

[ca.portal.admin]

Could anyone help with the below question.What are the advantages of PL/1 language over COBOL language.1.I knew the pointer concept exists in Pl/1 and in Cobol, its does not exists.PL/1 has advantage of accessing the memory faster by using address pointers.Apart from these differences.,what are the other main advantages and the differences?

[ca.portal.admin]

There are a LOT of scientificy types of reasons for using PL/1 (e.g. the pointers/linked lists) but there are also LOTS of reasons for using COBOL. I have PERSONALLY seen PL/1 programs that LOOKED almost identical to COBOL. COBOL has a REALLY NICE report writer facility in it (that they never teach you how to use in school - sadly; because I think that's one of it's BEST strengths).  COBOL is best suited for batch job type - BULK data processing.  Reports, Printing Forms (e.g. Invoices, Bills, General Ledger, AP/AR Reports, etc.) Designed to 'merge' the capabilities of COBOL and ForTran, PL/1 is more dynamic and better at performing tasks where data structures and usage are not as rigidly defined as in COBOL.  You can read all about the two in the Wikipedia.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL/Ihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL

[Anon Anon]

Over the years, the COBOL and PL/I languages have become more alike.  Recent generations of COBOL added a lot of object-oriented extensions and support for XML.Enterprise COBOL and PL/I both come from the same lab, work with similar technology, emphasize use of the latest System z hardware and software improvements,and helps integrate COBOL, PL/I and Web-based business processes in Web services, XML, Java, IMS, CICS, DB2 and other applications.http://www.ibm.com/software/awdtools/cobol/zos/http://www.ibm.com/software/awdtools/pli/plizos/Roger Miller, DB2 for z/OS

[Anon Anon]

Hi cortedel,Thanks for opening this great discussion. Roger and larr_helms have given some meaty answers. Let us know if these help or if you're looking for more.Thanks,Kim

[Anon Anon]

I think a key point is that there are far more COBOL programmers than PL/Iders, and as has been said COBOL has over the years added features that bring it much closer to PL/I - another one to mention is proper structured programming constructs, like END-IF, END-PERFORM.  I taught PL/I at the IBM UK Customer Education Centre (Sudbury Hill) in the early 80s, by the way. Those were the days!

[Anon Anon]

Thanks, herbg, we're lucky to have the benefit of your experience!Kim

[ca.portal.admin]

It's been decades since I've done any PL/1, but.... I remember several features that I used including recursive routines, real multitasking, real multiprogramming, dynamic subroutines, and cheating a little to allow me to use PL/1 and FORTRAN interchangeably so I could write my matrix handling routines using PL/1 and my computational routines in FORTRAN.  Back then, it made a difference in length-of-job and therefore better turnaround.Karl.

[Manuel-IMS-DB2]

In the end, the important is not the programming language you use but the analisys capabilities you have to face and solve business challenges...because behind any programming line coded there is always a business component..

[skywy]

Hello

With PL/I you can do about anything, even system-related programms (you can call directly most of the systemroutines/APIs).
We have guidelines for our programmers, we can check them direct in the PL/I compiler with the RULES and DEPRECATE/DEPRECATENEXT options.
Best performance we get with the ARCH level, we set it to the weakest hardware (fallback-machine) but COBOL V5 can do this now too.
PL/I has alot of BIF (BuiltIn Functions) for anything you need (for example BASE64,UNICODE coversions).
We let PL/I check the boudaries of the variables/arrays even in production (PREFIX(SIZE,STRINGRANGE,SUBSCRIPTRANGE)) what is very useful to detect programming errors at runtime (without, you just may have wrong data processed that you may find out very later).

The compiler gives alot of informations in the listing, where you may have an error, for example (IBM2615I DO-loop will always execute exactly once. A semicolon after the DO may be missing.). COBOL does not do that in these details.

If you are interested in PL/I and COBOL, come the the GSE ADL-Guide (Germany): http://gsenet.cms1.ch/Arbeitsgruppen/AADLD/tabid/1200/Default.aspx
We meet us every half a year and have direct contacts to the COBOL, PL/I and other IBM Labors.

We have both languages in our company but i do only PL/I (and Assembler), so i don't know all the details of COBOL.

Patrick Vogt
Chairman AADLD

 

[space-commander-travis]

I was a PL1 programmer for 15 years. I dabbled with COBOL and found it difficult to control. I haven't done mainframe programming for ages, but when my daughter got a job as a Web developer, and I looked at JavaScript, it is so easy to understand, coming from a PL1/Fortran background. In comparison, where has COBOL gone? Ive done some JavaScript now, and still yearn for the control that a DCL 'number' FIXED DEC(15,2); statement provides or a PIC'999,999.99' for that matter, but modern JavaScript has evolved from PL1, while COBOL has vanished!