The COBOL Syntax File

The COBOL schema extraction process, which is run when you read file descriptions from a COBOL source, generates a COBOL syntax file containing the file control entry (SELECT clause), file description entry (FD entry), and the associated data description entries for each file described in the COBOL source file.

You should only use COBOL source that is well-formed and compiles cleanly, as the creation of a COBOL syntax file goes through the compilation process. You should also refer to the extraction restrictions for details of syntax that will cause this process to fail.

The type of COBOL syntax file produced during the import process depends on the type of COBOL development product you have installed: users that have Visual COBOL or Enterprise Developer installed can produce a COBOL Syntax Tree (.cst) file, which stores the information as an Extensible Markup Language (.XML) document; users that have NET Express, Server Express, or no Micro Focus COBOL development product installed produce Relativity Symbol Table (.rst) files. Both of these types of file produce the same results, and both can be referred to as COBOL syntax files.

You can reuse COBOL syntax files to import FD information to more than one Relativity Catalog.