callen@ada-uts (05/26/88)
> 1. They believed that most Ada compilers (in fact, any in the > forseeable future) generate object code which is larger and > slower than the object code which is produced for similar > programs by COBOL compilers. One organization showed me a > "benchmark" in which a company (well-known in the Ada community) > had attempted to duplicate CICS (Customer Information Control > System) in Ada. The Ada version was more than 50% slower and > larger than the COBOL version. I would like to add a few details and corrections to this comment. The comparison was between two CICS transactions, one coded in Ada and the other in Cobol. For those not "in the know", CICS is a teleprocessing monitor for IBM systems that has been around since the early 1960's. CICS can be considered a mini-operating system; thus, the Ada runtime system had to be retargeted to this new "OS". The test was performed on a VERY early release of the new RTS. The Ada transaction was coded first (and to a tight deadline); the Cobol version came later as a VERY simple attempt to gather some INITIAL data comparing Ada and Cobol. I must emphasize that the Ada runtime system and CICS interface used was VERY preliminary; it is by no means optimal. The Cobol RTS and interface code has had 2 decades to mature. The fact that the Ada came in 50% slower than the Cobol was NOT particularly surprising, given these conditions. The figure can EASILY be improved. This single, primitive data point has been blown COMPLETELY out of proportion. It is worth noting that the size of the object code for the actual "mainline" program is SMALLER than that of the Cobol program! The runtime system swamped this fact. Object code quality is BY NO MEANS the problem, and as I said earlier, the RTS can be (and is being) improved. In case you can't tell, I wrote both the Ada and (shudder) Cobol code for this "benchmark" (such as it is). Many years ago I did commercial programming for online systems in Cobol. I KNOW Cobol. Why I'm admitting this in public I don't know. :-) I have been writing Ada for 2 years, I think it's fair to say that I KNOW Ada, too. I can see advantages and disadvantages to writing data processing code in Ada rather than Cobol. But to use this ONE crude test to claim that "Cobol outperforms Ada by 50%" is baloney. -- Jerry Callen Intermetrics, Inc. 733 Concord Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138 (617) 661-1840 Internet: callen@inmet.inmet.com UUCP: ...{harvard,ihnp4,ima}!inmet!callen