October 31, 2016 at 7:57 am
CELKO (10/31/2016)
I doubt the vast majority of developers today have even heard of COBOL, and they certainly have never programmed in it.
Yep, and nobody takes Latin either. Yet everywhere you look, in vocabularies, grammars and linguistics, you find the Latin mindset. Would you respect a linguist or writer who has no appreciation for this? Same principle (knowing the heritage and reasons for something in your trade) applies to programming; like it or not, COBOL and FORTRAN are like Latin and Greek for us.;-)
Latin actually is the base for many romance languages. COBOL is not the base for the SQL language ... unless you can provide ANY evidence that it actually is?
SQL DBA,SQL Server MVP(07, 08, 09) "It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear." "Norm", on "Cheers". Also from "Cheers", from "Carla": "You need to know 3 things about Tortelli men: Tortelli men draw women like flies; Tortelli men treat women like flies; Tortelli men's brains are in their flies".
October 31, 2016 at 8:19 am
Interesting arguments about COBOL and SQL since the first is a procedural language and the second is a declarative language. In SQL we don't tell sql server HOW to process the query. But, under the hood sql server is doing things procedurally, technically, though there is multi-threading, suspending, and queueing going on. Seems to me declarative language build on top the foundation laid by procedural languages.
As for the real issue of this thread, most beginning programmers haven't yet distinguished a data item as having an input format versus a storage format versus a display format. It gets worse too. Different products will have different edit masks and display masks and transform data from say numeric to string without your permission, thinking it knows better than you.
October 31, 2016 at 9:51 am
CELKO (10/28/2016)
You do not understand the difference between a string and a numeric in SQL. Registration numbers are called "tag numbers" in data modeling; they are a name of an entity that happens be written with digits and perhaps other punctuation rather than alphabetic characters.You have tried to convert the string of digits into a numeric. The SQL engine has picked the simplest representation of a numeric value that it could find. In this case it happens to be scientific or exponential notation.
If you would followed forum rules and posted DDL, we would have seen this immediately and I had to guess. This mistake is most commonly made by old COBOL programmers, because COBOL represents everything in character strings.
I am really tired of you bashing old COBOL programmers. I for one made the transition from COBOL to SQL without bringing the "baggage" you keep harping on and I am pretty sure many of the other COBOL programmers I have worked with have done so as well.
Time to put your COBOL horse out to pasture as many of the younger generation are more likely to be Java based developers and the real problem is getting people to think in a more set based manner rather than a procedural manner.
October 31, 2016 at 9:57 am
CELKO (10/28/2016)
This mistake is most commonly made by old COBOL programmers, because COBOL represents everything in character strings.
No, actually COBOL had numeric values as well. For example, packed decimal format stored only numbers, not strings. While you could manipulate them as just bytes, they were still not strings, since adding 1 to 89 resulted in 90, and not, for example, "891". If you insist on continuing to bash COBOL programmers, at least you can get basic facts straight.
Edit: No to mention COMP (binary on IBM) fields. Good COBOL programmers used comp-3 for counters and comp for subscripts for arrays. Zoned decimal was used only for display, as was numeric edited data (PIC Z9.99).
SQL DBA,SQL Server MVP(07, 08, 09) "It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear." "Norm", on "Cheers". Also from "Cheers", from "Carla": "You need to know 3 things about Tortelli men: Tortelli men draw women like flies; Tortelli men treat women like flies; Tortelli men's brains are in their flies".
October 31, 2016 at 3:03 pm
ScottPletcher (10/31/2016)
Latin actually is the base for many romance languages.
Latin is the base for ALL Romance languages. I have an MA in Linguistics, so I have some idea what I'm talking about here.
Drew
J. Drew Allen
Business Intelligence Analyst
Philadelphia, PA
October 31, 2016 at 3:41 pm
drew.allen (10/31/2016)
ScottPletcher (10/31/2016)
Latin actually is the base for many romance languages.Latin is the base for ALL Romance languages. I have an MA in Linguistics, so I have some idea what I'm talking about here.
Drew
OK. I wasn't sure of that, but I knew it was at least some. I actually thought the "romance" part was even because it came from Latin, but wasn't sure of it. I'm certainly not a linguist, just a DBA.
However, I did study logic enough to know that if "All A is B", then "Some A is B" must also be true, so my original statement isn't false, it's just not as strong as it could be :-).
SQL DBA,SQL Server MVP(07, 08, 09) "It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear." "Norm", on "Cheers". Also from "Cheers", from "Carla": "You need to know 3 things about Tortelli men: Tortelli men draw women like flies; Tortelli men treat women like flies; Tortelli men's brains are in their flies".
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