nemesis wrote:
> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>> nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>>> 70-80%?  I thought COBOL was pretty much dead after SQL.
>>   Is SQL even Turing-complete?
> 
> No.  But my point is that COBOL was the language to write your business in when
> there was:
> 1) no standard databases

You got it backwards, actually. The CODASYL database standard is what led to 
needing a business language to access databases, a la COBOL. SQL replaced 
CODASYL only some 10-15 years later (depending on how you define "replaced").

> 2) no easier language

No business-oriented language that was easier, yes. There was basically 
assembler, fortran, cobol, LISP, maybe APL and/or BASIC. COBOL's definitely 
the best of the bunch for business/database apps.

> Even Perl+SQL database via DBI offer a far more robust and easier solution than
> COBOL.

Disagreed. Perl has no decimal money type, for example. Plus, it's up to the 
programmer to ensure that files are laid out correctly between different 
applications, for example. The lack of a file section in the data division 
of Perl means you can screw things up in common files.  It might be "easier" 
in some ways, but I don't think "more robust" is quite right, assuming you 
mean "robust" the same way I do (namely, unlikely to screw up your data).

Plus, why in the world would you run an interpreted Perl program to do 
things like (say) payroll, that you're going to compile once and run 100,000 
times over the lifetime of the application?

> That said, I think it's truly hard to believe COBOL is more used than SQL in
> business today.  Every system these days accesses a SQL database in one way or
> another, be it written in Java, C#, C++, Perl or, I believe, COBOL.

Likely.

> So, I believe that 70-80% figure sounds highly overrated unless it's counting
> SQL out.

I don't think SQL counts as a programming language you write programs in, at 
least in the eyes of the author.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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