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:
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.