Cobol is a programming language but it stores its data in binary flat files. So in a sense it is its own database. There are applications that can extract data out of cobal files, but it's a messy task. There is no such beast as an ODBC cobal driver...
We had a Cobal based Agency Management system here four years ago. We ended up moving to a SQL based solution from another vendor. We did have to extract some data from the cobal app, but luckily the new vendor had experience with our old system and was able to do that for us. The data wasn't very pretty.
I would recommend your client shop around for a more technologically advanced trucking system. Or have one designed.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2006 11:18 AM To: KC Linux Users Group Subject: RE: Keypoint and Linux?
Run? How would it use a Cobol database? Cobol is a programming language. There are GNU Cobol components for compiling (gcc, may have to add an extension), but I've never heard of a Cobol database. I'm working with a Sybase database modeling tool on Windows right now (Power Builder 11) and it can work with basically any database and supposedly reverse engineer obscure ones, so they tell me. I'm going to make a broad statement and say that any ODBC-enabled database will work with Winders and you should be able to get it to work with Linux too. Any input from DBAs?