The basic steps to developing an XML-enabled application are as follows:
- Design the COBOL data structure and program logic. Develop a COBOL program, or modify an existing one, using XML Extensions
statements. (Note that it is quite reasonable to use a data structure that already exists in your application. In this case,
you would create an XSLT transformation to adapt the existing data structure to the requirements of the XML document.)
- Make sure the lixml*.cpy copy files are accessible to the compiler; this can be done by setting the COPYPATH environment variable to include the
sample/xmlext directory from the installation directory in the search sequence for copy files. See
COPY Files Simplify Coding for more information.
Compile the program. Use the
-Ze compilation option which results in the production of the XML-format symbol table.
- Run the COBOL program. On Windows use
-y xmlif.dll. On UNIX use
-y libxmlif.so or
-y libxmlif64.so. Test the program and repeat steps 1 and 2, as necessary.
- Deploy the application. Distribute the XML Extensions deployable files. These files consist of the
xmlif library (the DLL on Windows or shared object on UNIX) and the underlying XML parser that the
xmlif library uses (MSXML 6 on Windows; the libxml2 parser is linked with the
xmlif library on UNIX).