Traditionally, many systems programmers have customized Telon by altering the Telon macros.  There are three macros which are intended to be altered: PGMNAMES, TLNIIS, and USREDITS, so these macros are well documented, and when one systems programmer leaves, the next one can usually figure out what happened.  Changes made to other macros have proved to be much more hazardous: the macros are delivered completely undocumented, and written in the conditional assembly language which is so rarely used today.  When a new release of Telon (or even a PTF) is installed, or a change in system software results in some need to update the customization, considerable costs can occur trying to understand the situation.  Also CA often renames all the 'paragraph names' (labels) in a macro, making it even harder to move customization to the new release.   CASE Integrators has extensive experience in resolving such problems created by others, but we have found a way to customize Telon without creating such problems ourselves.

When we customize Telon, we do not change any of the macros other than the three mentioned above.  Instead, we write a COBOL program which edits the output from the Telon generator to meet your needs.  This is feasible because the output from Telon is so standardized, but it does require considerable experience to be able to know whether the piece of code you are relying on will always be generated the same way, or whether it is only generated for most Telon programs, destroying the integrity of the post-processor for the exceptional ones.

Writing a post-processor from scratch takes considerably longer than making a few small changes to macros.  Once you have one running, enhancing it is usually faster than further macro changes.  The real benefit comes when a PTF tape arrives - you can install it with considerable confidence that it will not affect the post-processor, and if it does, its easy to fix a COBOL program - anyone can do it.

CASE Integrators has built up a large library of post-processors, so that we can probably make yours in a fraction of the time it would take you to do it yourselves.

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