Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved


Chapter 1 Introduction : Overview of the COBOL Copybook Palette

Overview of the COBOL Copybook Palette
The COBOL Copybook palette provides a mechanism for interacting with applications that produce COBOL data. The data schema of a COBOL program is defined within the COPY directive within the WORKING STORAGE section. You can store the COBOL Copybook into a file, and these files typically have a .cpy, .cob, or .cbl file extension. These files define the structure of the data that the COBOL program uses and they are roughly analogous to include files in the C programming language.
To use data produced by a COBOL program, TIBCO BusinessWorks must parse the data into XML so that activities within a process definition can access it. The COBOL Copybook palette has the following resources that allow you to manipulate COBOL data:
Copybook Schema — This shared configuration resource specifies the schema contained within a Copybook file.
Parse Copybook Data — This activity parses incoming COBOL data based on a specified Copybook Schema resource. After parsing, the data is contained within an XML schema and other activities can access the data.
Render Copybook Data— This activity accepts XML data and produces COBOL data based on the specified Copybook schema. The formatted COBOL data can then be passed to a COBOL application.
Typically, COBOL applications communicate to other applications by way of a messaging service, such as IBM MQ Series or Java Messaging Service (JMS). COBOL applications can also read data from or write data to a file. TIBCO BusinessWorks can retrieve or send COBOL data by way of a messaging service or by using the file system.
Figure 1 illustrates using the BusinessWorks COBOL Copybook Plug-in to receive and send COBOL data to and from a mainframe application or a COBOL data file. The COBOL Copybook schema is used to define the structure of the data.
Figure 1 Using the BusinessWorks COBOL Copybook Plug-in

Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved