The Dark Side of Subprograms

There are important advantages to the judicious use of COBOL subprograms.

However, those advantages exact a price: you have to manage a larger collection of modules. It's harder to remember which module does what, or which modules need to be linked into which programs.

The use of multiple entry points compounds the problem. Depending on your naming conventions, the name of an entry point may give no clue to the name of the module where the entry point resides.

Ideally we would use automated tools to analyze source code and identify the dependencies among modules. Until those tools arrive, we will have to keep track of our modules manually. For example, at work I maintain a collection of Web pages on our intranet, to document the subprograms in JOCKEY.

Though tedious and burdensome, this task is manageable. If there are ever too many subprograms to manage, the application would probably be just as unmanageable without subprograms -- if not worse.

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