Re: cobol storedprocedures

On 8/15/05, MICHAEL BATTANI <MICHAEL(dot)BATTANI(at)companiongroup(dot)com> wrote:
> I've been scanning the postgres website and yours to find out any
> information on cobol stored procedures. Is there any plans on incorporating
> this
> in future releases?

I don't think anyone is working on such a thing right now.

The procedural languages development usually follows this route:
1. Someone skilled in C needs some procedural language, be it Perl,
Python, Ruby, etc.
2. This person "hacks" a "glue" code in C for such a language -- this
step is actually relatively easy -- you just have to create code
similar to already existing procedural languages.
3. This person releases the code, probably as a pg_foundry code,
announces it and so on.
4. If language receives significant response it may be moved into core
system. If it does not or for some reason (is not mature enough, user
base is too small, nobody feels a need to drive the process), it is
still available as pg_foundry or similar project -- you have to
download it seperately -- it is the case with PL/Ruby, PL/Java, PL/J.

The problem is finding that 'someone'. The law of big numbers states
that given large enough population of <this language> developers, you
will find this 'someone' in this
group. ;) Personally I do not know Cobol, do not know any active
Cobol coders and
do not know any Cobol implementation internals (how difficult is it to
plug it in as
an embedded language).

One question you have to answer yourself is what do you need Cobol for?
There is a high chance that PL/perl, PL/python, PL/ruby or PL/R will do the
thing you need, but have advantage of being "already there".

Regards,
Dawid