I have been a Mainframe COBOL programmer for 3 years. I have a job offer also as a Mainframe Programmer but the language is not COBOL. It is NATURAL programming and ADABAS. It also runs in mainframe. I now have to decide if I am going to accept the job offer. Would there be no disadvantages on my end and on my career if I accept this offer? Please help me because I am not familiar with Natural/ADABAS. Thanks in advance
Everyone here in these communities will tell you Natural/ADABAS beats COBOL/DB2 on many levels. For the database, ADABAS on mainframes is so much more efficient with higher performance and throughput. It’s inverted list architecture makes it much faster at retrieving the data you want than the relational DBMS’s, and its ability to scale in support of extremely large file and database sizes is best of breed.
Natural is a 4GL that originally was designed to beat COBOL (3GL) as the language of choice for writing business applications. You would find similarities in the syntax and style, though as you learn Natural you will come to see that you have to diverge from writing “Nat-BOL” to really optimize and to take advantage of all the language has to offer. This is increasingly the case as Natural has been evolving from being in competition with COBOL to being in competition with Java as language of choice for writing services (SOA).
I cannot tell whether you are looking to take a job as a Natural programmer or Adabas DBA based on the two forums you posted in. If you have proficiency in the COBOL/DB2 arena, you can definitely adapt, and this would be a good chance to do so. Get some on the job experience then, and after that look for some training from Software AGs education services.
Best of luck!