Coding in MetaCOBOL (META COBOL).

[Shivani K]

Hi,

I am moved to a new project where their codes are mainly in Meta Cobol. What I heard is once we do a compilation meta cobol converts in to cobol standards.I could see some of the cobol verbs perform and go-to are extensivley used in the compilation output. Though, at the same time, in the normal meta cobol I dont see perfrom, evalutaes, go to verbs. Should not there be a performance concern for the code?

[William Collins]

Why specifically do you feel there should be a performance problem?

[Robert Sample]

In general, yes there will be a performance impact. Every level of abstraction reduces overall performance -- yet every level of abstraction adds to the readability of the code (most of the time), which is why people use COBOL or MetaCOBOL instead of coding in Assembler these days. MetaCOBOL programs will be smaller, easier to understand, and easier to maintain than equivalent Assembler programs -- and the small performance impact of MetaCOBOL is the price paid for those benefits. Few sites would ever go back to Assembler, even though they could improve performance that way. Sites spend a lot more today on maintaining programs then they do to execute those programs, so improving readability / maintenance provides much greater benefits to the organization.