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Welcome to LNS Software Systems

Firebird is a relational database offering many ANSI SQL standard features that runs on Linux, Windows, and a variety of Unix platforms. Firebird offers excellent concurrency, high performance, and powerful language support for stored procedures and triggers. It has been used in production systems, under a variety of names since 1981.

To learn more about Firebird please visit www.firebirdsql.org.

If you are looking for applications that are powered by Firebird, try posting a message on the firebird-applications mailing list.

Click to join firebird-applications

Embedded SQL Programming in Cobol

Because of requirements within our own organization we undertook to implement support for the RM/Cobol programming language in Firebird's embedded SQL pre-complier (gpre). We have also documented this new interface at least well enough for our own purposes. The following links will take you to the ESQL for RM/Cobol programming guide.

Embedded SQL Guide for RM/Cobol (HTML Version)
Embedded SQL Guide for RM/Cobol (PDF Version)

Converting Cobol Data to Firebird

As part of our ongoing effort to modernize our applications we are moving more and more of our Cobol data to Firebird. In order to reduce the manpower eaten up writing Cobol to Firebird conversion programs, we undertook to develop a generic RM/Cobol data file to Firebird table converter.

The converter parses the RM/Cobol source code of your data file to determine the record format. It uses this information to create a Firebird compatible description of the target table(s). The layout of the Firebird tables can be manually modified until it meets your needs, including the creation of indices. Alternatively, you can import existing Firebird table definitions. Once the layout of your target tables is completed the converter will create the target table(s) using a set of default field conversion rules. The conversion rules can be overridden through the use of scripts that can massage the data before it is written to the table(s). The converter has the ability to create multiple target tables from a single source file. This allows your to create records containing header data and an array of items into a header table and multiple rows in a detail table. The converter allows you to specify a filter to restrict the records to be converted. This allows you to create separate conversion projects for each record type in a file.

You can find the User's Guide for the data converter here.

If you would be interested in using this data converter please email us.

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