Easytrieve

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Easytrieve is a Report generator product of CA, Inc. (Computer Associates) .Easytrieve Classic and Easytrieve Plus are two available versions of this programming languages primarily designed to generate reports and are used by large corporations operating in mainframe (z/OS, z/VM, z/VSE), UNIX, Linux, and Microsoft Windows environments

Easytrieve Classic vs. Easytrieve Plus

Easytrieve (or Easytrieve Classic) is the first iteration in the Easytrieve series and requires the programmer to use a rigid program structure and syntax. The second iteration of Easytrieve was originally an independent product that later was renamed as Easytrieve Plus.

Easytrieve Classic is no longer licensed separately, but instead made available to all Easytrieve customers. Easytrieve Plus includes changes in rules to program, structure and syntax, making report generation much more easier and powerful and also programmer-friendly.

Features

In general, an Easytrieve program can read multiple varieties of input files like SAM, ISAM, VSAM, PS, also read variety of databases like TMF, ADABAS, DB2, IDMS and can also do file manipulation operations like read, write and sort.

Easytrieve could process data of types like alphanumeric, numeric, packed, binary, and could also invoke other COBOL and Assembler programs.

Easytrieve programs could be run as interpreted script and at times are also compiled.

Procedures or Macros are used for modularization and is equivalent of functions

Reading input files is very much implicit and the application or the report logic does not have to be explicit on this functionality.

The application program could take the liberty of customising the details of the report like spacing, sort order, record grouping,labelling,and page breaking.

The output could also be formated in the CSV, and HTML formats.

Structure of an Easytrieve program

A typical Easytrieve program has three sections:

  • Environment definition - used to specify operating parameters and modes for the program, This section is optional
  • Library definition- required in every program, and it is used to define data, such as any input and output files and working variables
  • One or more Activity definition - Program logic on file processing, data processing,data manipulation, sorting and reporting. This is a mandatory section on every Easytrieve program

Many keywords and reserved words of COBOL are used in an Easytrieve program MOVE, ADD, SUBTRACT, MULTIPLY, DIVIDE, CALL, CASE, and IF and END-IF.

Like COBOL, Easytrieve has many of the same variable types (alphanumeric, numeric, packed, binary, etc.) and could group or redefine variables together. Easytrieve does not use level numbers like COBOL, to specify sub-levels under a group variable, Easytrieve uses integer offsets to indicate the starting position within the group.

See also

References

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