[xquery-talk] XQuery Platform Support

[Michael Kay]

> What would be my options on the mainframe side for
> 1) converting a COBOL copybook type feed to a XML feed

Well, you need to parse the COBOL. This means you need a language that's
reasonably good at regular expression handling. Perl and Python are
common choices; XSLT 2.0 has good capabilities in this area, but XSLT
1.0 and XQuery 1.0 aren't really suitable. I've no idea what's available
on IBM mainframes.

> 2) what type of program could execute an XQuery expression on 
> the mainframe ... Java ?  Can a COBOL program invoke a Java program ?

Many XQuery processors that run on the mainframe are likely to be Java
programs. Java does offer cross-language support, but the question of
how to call Java from COBOL on an IBM mainframe is just a little bit
off-centre for this list!

Michael Kay