Introduction
As the leader in mainframe sort migrations to UNIX and Windows since 1985, The CoSORT Company continues to provide superior support for ported COBOL applications and data. CoSORT interfaces directly to the Micro Focus COBOL sort verb on Workbench v4.0 for Windows and 4.1 for UNIX, as well as Net Express 3.0-4.5 for Windows, and Server Express 2.2 for UNIX.

Without any source code changes, COBOL programs can exploit CoSORT's single or multi-processing sort performance on open systems. This powerful performance feature is a product of IRI's participation in the Micro Focus TechLink program and worldwide user requests.

Supplementary Description

The mfcosort interface can be linked statically or dynamically to produce new executables or a full RTS. Either way, performance improves between 3 and 6 times over MF COBOL's native sort routines, and the temporary work space required is cut by at least half. Below are a few benchmarks for Micro Focus Server Express Version 4, on a Sun 280R running Solaris 8.

CoSORT also offers COBOL users:

• native collation and translation of all MF and RM data types;
• an open API for direct subroutine and coroutine calls to the CoSORT engine;
• documentation for serial and parallel calls to mainframe sort control language (SortCL);
• and, translators for MVS and VSE JCL sort steps -- and COBOL copybook layouts -- that generate SortCL scripts for UNIX and Windows execution.