TABLEMASTER(ID:2995/tab007)Hoskyns Systems Research Structures: References: Attempts have also been made to imbed decision table forms and aids in a language which would help programmers in converting flow charts and programs. FORTAB and DETRAN in FORTRAN and DETAB-X in COBOL are examples from the early 1960's. More recently, a number of decision table translators for generating COBOL logic statements have been designed. This has been in conjunction with the recent attention devoted to COBOL support packages and to programming and productivity aids in the 1970's. There are undoubtedly a few dozen decision table processors commercially available. There were at least ten of them available in 1971. Among these were TAB-70 from Control Data Corp., TABTRAN from Westinghouse Tele-computer Systems, and TABLEMASTER from Hoskyns Systems Research. They operate, with a few exceptions, in batch mode only. These processors usually translate tables with COBOL-compatible content, i.e., the condition stub contains COBOL relational expressions and the action stub contains COBOL assignment statements which correspond to the COBOL paragraphs of the PROCEDURE DIVISION of the COBOL program. Differences among the available translators are mostly in degree and translation algorithm. They usually check input tables for completeness, redundancy, and consistency, e.g., detect conflicts and duplicates. Some of the algorithms strive to minimize the Storage necessary for the program produced and others its execution time. Pooch provides a survey and comparison of algorithms for translating tables. Extract: PDEL A brief example will illustrate that many special purpose packages indeed have features in common with customizers. The partial differential equation Language PDEL - has been designed to solve partial differential equations which characterize a variety of systems across various disciplines such as thermal systems, hydrological systems, and particle diffusion systems [I51 The input language is nonprocedural and does not require programming know-how; no how-to-do-it numerical analysis indications are required. The PDEL translator, written in PL/I and originally implemented via PL/I macro facilities, generates a complete ready to compile PL/I program with the numerical analysis approach to solve the specific User problem, The translator is made up of 1) primarily n set of skeletal modules and often used structures of code, 2) a Set of modules which contains the logic equivalent to decision tables to choose the source statements corresponding to the input PDEL program specifications. 3) a set of code generators that create the necessary new code or modify built-in code dictated by the input specifications, and 4) a master control program which builds and edits a complete and debugged PL/I program made up of the selected prewritten code and of the new code created [16]. Usually from 50% to 85% of the complete program is comprised of prewritten code. Elements 1, 2 and 4 are much like those of customizers. Element 3, the creation of code, typifies high level languages. Notice the placement of PDEL and of other more widely used special purpose languages such as GPSS. SIMSCRIPT, and CSMP in the spectrum of code generators in Figure 2. |