OO Factory

Oliver,

One of your questions posed in your reply was "Did you mean to post this
to comp.lang.cobol". You're damn right I did !.

Sequence - originally following up on my query about Factory thought I'd
post to javahelp asking for comment so I created a DRAFT. Then I saw you
answering topics in javahelp. So now I took my original DRAFT and hacked
it around; of course, lengthy, I saved it from time to time.
Spellchecked and sent. Strange - I don't see it popping up on c.l.c. -
**$#!!** computers. It was gone from my Draft folder; I MUST have sent
it. Only this morning, having rechecked sent messages - confirmed I HAD
sent it - to JAVA HELP !!!!

So the original for just the COBOL audience, and then I'll get back to
responding to your immediate queries.

Jimmy

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OK Oliver,

The original draft of this was written to quiz java.help - but I was
still thinking I would be SOL, like the response I got from the 'theory'
boys in comp.lang.object. Then when I spot your name in java.help -
"Here's somebody in a half-way house between Java and COBOL".

Most importantly - COBOL 2002 does have FACTORY - so I'm not on a
crue to revamp the standard and get it deleted. Just trying to check
if I'm missing something. The fact that FACTORY exists in COBOL does no
harm, even if you don't use it.

Your reference to Gang of Four - obviously nothing to do with the folks
in Bejing who are all in a mausoleum by now. If I'm on the same
wavelength, is that rather "the Gang of Six", the small software house
in UK, with some lucrative government contracts where they appear to
have developed SPRING as an enhancement of SWING ? Doesn't matter - but
is a book by two of them which triggered this query.

Having got a response from Oliver, please anybody else, jump in and
comment. Stephen G. and Simon T., your respective skills are associated
I think primarily with Unix and DBs. Perhaps Stephen could point out
this thread to one of the OO people, perhaps David Sands, just in case
he/they would like to put in their two cents ?

Oliver, I know you have the Java background and by showing up here you
have an interest in COBOL. I'm working on the assumption that you are
not necessarily comfortable with our OO - so up front I'm spelling out
things which you may already know about OO COBOL. I may make reference
to Class-Control in examples - this is the syntax used by N/E up to V
3.1; N/E 4.0 onwards uses the J4 Standard 'Repository". Can't actually
recall, but I think Fujitsu had 'Repository' from Day One.

Basic outline of a class source :-

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Class-id.    MyClass inherits from Base.*> Very much like Program-id.

Class-Control.    MyClass is class "myclass"
CustomerFile is class "filecust"
CustomerDialog is class "dlgcust"