I have the need to produce an XML formatted file from what is now a sequential file produced by a COBOL program. I did some cursory search and with that it seems like either we can use a third party tool or can write a COBOL program with all the XML tags already in working storage reformat the file in to XML. Or can there be a way to use a Java app to read the generated file and produce the XML using Java tools and a Java parser?
But with these we are not sure what one should be choose. Asking client for a new tool is a tough preposition. The option with COBOL seems doable, but does not seem to be the most elegant of solutions. Solution with Java parser sounds interesting and appealing, but the question is, we need to make sure that anything that is run is standard, vanilla IBM stuff. What level of VSE (if any) supports Java natively?