# Generating cobol structure from parameters

**URL:** <https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/generating-cobol-structure-from-parameters/234683>\
**Category:** Forum\
**Tags:** Adabas-Natural, Natural, Mainframe-Integration, EntireX, Natural-on-Mainframes\
**Created:** [October 18, 2020, 12:08pm UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/generating-cobol-structure-from-parameters/234683 "2020-10-18T12:08:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rnn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/57b2e6/32.png) [@rnn](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/rnn)\
**Post date:** [October 18, 2020, 12:08pm UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/generating-cobol-structure-from-parameters/234683/1 "2020-10-18T12:08:31Z")

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I need to write several cobol program to comunicate with Natural.  
I am looking for some kind of a utilty that will get the paramters object and convert it to a cobol structure data  
I have no knowladge with natural so be gental .

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**Author:** ![Ralph\_Zbrog](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/techcommunity/user_avatar/techcommunity.softwareag.com/ralph_zbrog/32/78_2.png) [@Ralph\_Zbrog](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/Ralph_Zbrog)\
**Post date:** [October 18, 2020, 6:12pm UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/generating-cobol-structure-from-parameters/234683/2 "2020-10-18T18:12:17Z")

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Without Software AG product experience. it will be just as quick to create COBOL copybooks manually via copy/paste.

SAG’s EntireX can create the interfaces automatically.

SAG’s dictionary, Predict, can create copybooks from file definitions.

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**Author:** ![Peter\_Hofer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/2acd7d/32.png) [@Peter\_Hofer](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/Peter_Hofer)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2020, 12:25pm UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/generating-cobol-structure-from-parameters/234683/3 "2020-10-19T12:25:20Z")

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Hi Raanan,  
Having a compatible Natural and COBOL data structure layout is not enough. You have to consider conversion, type mapping etc; EntireX does all these tasks for you.

If you have existing Natural subprograms you want to call from Cobol, you can perform the following steps:

1. Use the IDL Extractor for Natural (from EntireX) to extract an idl from the Natural subprogram.
2. With the Cobol Wrapper you can generate a Cobol Client Interface Object based on the extracted IDL.  
See the EntireX Documentation for details.

Let me know if this answers your question.  
Regards  
Peter

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**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/techcommunity/original/3X/c/d/cd19967bb605d28a72d77eb83a1cae22f3df2eb8.svg) [@system](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2021, 3:45pm UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/generating-cobol-structure-from-parameters/234683/4 "2021-04-02T15:45:17Z")

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