I've been asked a few times in the past if I had any suggestions for "best practices" or "how to write the fastest code possible" when coding COBOL. And I'm almost always stumped for an answer that is beyond one or two sentences.
Well, I'm now in luck.
One of the developers at Micro Focus has posted an article on the community website (http://community.microfocus.com) which covers this very topic.
You can find the article at http://community.microfocus.com/library/articles/84_Coding_for_speed_size_and_portability
In his article, you'll find some pretty good tidbits which will have your code screaming along in record fashion in no time.
Which brings a question to mind...
How often do you review your application source to see if you can make it better? Once in awhile? Never? Only when it breaks?
I once had a programmer who worked for me dig into a rather complex piece of long running code (sometimes upwards of 20 hours). He was able to rewrite the routine and reduce the clock time to less than three minutes on average. No I didn't write it originally *smile*. But it goes to show you that you shouldn't overlook doing a review of the source once in awhile to see if there is a better way to do things now that you are older and wiser.
Just a thought!
See ya.
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Posts
Great post. Jeremy's post is also inspirational.
ReplyDeleteThere is also a huge scope for performance related work no only in the COBOL but in the way COBOL is executed. This applies to native managed COBOL.
I have posted some stuff here http://nerds-central.blogspot.com/2011/03/understanding-jvm-performance-it-is.html
I intent to write a complimentary post to Jeremy's covering managed COBOL.
Again - thanks - AJ