I was prompted to write this tutorial on the COBOL Report Writer feature, by the question is Report Writer available in the MVT COBOL compiler and, if so, how do I use it?. Of course the answer is yes, and it is really quite easy to use. I started learning to use Report Writer before I was fully competent to write advanced COBOL programs, simply because one of the gurus at the university where I was a student was a devoted fan of Report Writer. He was always eager to show me something new that could be done with Report Writer, quicker and more easily than manually coding. I also learned that it was useful for more than just writing printed reports, since the first time I asked him, what are you doing, he was using it to prepare a tape to submit to the state's college coordinating board. First of all, I want to clarify that the COBOL Report Writer feature is not an equivalent to a stand-alone data extracting and reporting program, such as Easytrieve or Mark IV. Instead, it is probably more accurate to describe it as a printing control tool, since what it really does is simplify the coding of print output lines and automates the process of populating and writing the lines described in the Report Writer section of the program. There have been some advancements made in Report Writer since the era of the MVT COBOL compiler, but I will only cover the features present in the MVT COBOL compiler. They should all still work in any compiler that supports the Report Writer feature and if you understand the basics, the few new enhancements will be easy to pick up from the manual for your compiler. Report Writer allows you to code, in the Report Section, a logical representation of the report to be printed. Therefore, the first step is to define the logical organization of the report you wish to produce. A report may be divided into one or more report groups. Each.
Why Report Writer? Report Writer takes the drudgery out of producing reports and other printed output. You concentrate on getting the job done instead of counting bytes, adjusting FILLER, counting lines, and doing page ejects. By eliminating most of the PROCEDURE DIVISION code necessary to produce the printed page, Report Writer eliminates much of the opportunity for programming bugs. Why not concentrate your efforts on your report content instead of the format? RW2 handles most report housekeeping such as printing titles, counting and printing page numbers, handling breaks and totals, automatically. The layout of your report is specified in a REPORT SECTION in your DATA DIVISION. To print your report, all you have to do is load the data in your program, and then GENERATE the report detail (which may consist of anything from a single line, to the entire report!). Report Writer saves you TIME, not only for initial development, but also for maintenance. Report Writer makes it easy to develop sophisticated reports, in half of the time, with a quarter of the procedural code. If you have to reformat your report, it's usually possible to do it by modifying the REPORT SECTION, without even touching your PROCEDURE DIVISION code! RW2 supports the full IBM VS COBOL Report Writer syntax. IBM mainframe COBOL programs using Report Writer programs will generally run on your PC COBOL without change. RW2's powerful extensions to mainframe Report Writer features will spoil you forever. You no longer have to count bytes in many of your literals or worry about counting lines and pages to make sure that your formatting works out. RW2 makes printing unbelievably EASY! RW2 produces fast and efficient code. None of the speed or efficiency of your COBOL is sacrificed. RW2 consists of a preprocessor and an associated object library that contains runtime support. RW2 has full.
The COBOL parser conforms to the following standards and dialects: ANSI COBOL 74 ( ANSI X ) = ISO 1989:1978 ANSI COBOL 85 ( ANSI X ) = ISO 1989:1985 = DIN 66 028 IBM OS/ VS COBOL IBM VS COBOL II IBM SAA COBOL/370 IBM DOSVS COBOL IBM COBOL for OS/390 SOURCE and SUM items are represented by fields with the correct PICTURE clause. 4a WORKING- STORAGE areas are created to hold the totals for SUM counters. 5a INITIATE and TERMINATE statements in the PROCEDURE DIVISION are changed to PERFORM statements. 6a GENERATE statements in.
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