Re: J4 - presentation/discussion on "Future of the COBOL Standard"

On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:50:02 GMT, "William M. Klein"
<wmklein@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>"Robert" <no@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
>news:m1pbt3hf9l197putsqlr2pvr1iccpgv7ka@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:12:04 -0600, "Frank Swarbrick" 
>> <Frank.Swarbrick@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>> wrote:
>>
><snip>
>
>> The average Cobol programmer has avoided Occurs Depending On for 22
years.
>>
>
>As usual, Robert's claim for what the "average COBOL ****gramme" does or
doesn't 
>do is based on his rigourously applied research method, i.e. "it seems to
me - 
>that of those programs and programmers that I have seen, that ..."

When ODO comes up in this forum, as it did 3 years ago and 6 months ago in
my Myth Busters
thread, some here said it should not be used because it is too slow (even
when faced with
contrary evidence)  or because it adds 'unnecessary complexity'. The Micro
Focus Server
Express performance tips manual says it is slower; an IBM manual you
linked to says the
same. 

ODO is one of many faith-based  issues in the Cobol community.

Manuals fail to point out that ODO makes SEARCH ALL 10% faster for typical
(2^10) table
size. Assuming the table is half full, the difference is 1 - (log2(n) / (1
+ log2(n))). 

>Needless to say, given the LARGE number of files that are still used by
COBOL 
>programs and that require ODO's, what he has stated does apply in some 
>environments, but requires a use of "average" that is not universally
used.

Files? I thought files were replaced by databases years ago. Rows don't
contain arrays.