TAL Reference Manual

Introduction
TAL Reference Manual526371-001
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System Services
Modular programming—You can divide a large program into modules, compile
them separately, and then bind the resulting object files into a new object file.
Mixed-language programming—You can use NAME and BLOCK declarations,
procedure declaration options—such as public name, language attribute, and
parameter pairs—and compiler directives in support of mixed-language
programming.
NonStop SQL features—You can use compiler directives to prepare a program in
which you want to embed SQL statements.
System Services
Your program can ignore many things such as the presence of other running programs
and whether your program fits into memory. For example, programs are loaded into
memory for you and absent pages are brought from disk into memory as needed.
System Procedures
The file system treats all devices as files, including disk files, disk packs, terminals,
printers, and programs running on the system. File-system procedures provide a file-
access method that lets you ignore the peculiarities of devices. Your program can refer
to a file by the file’s symbolic name without knowing the physical address or
configuration status of the file.
Your program can call system procedures that activate and terminate programs
running in any processor on the system. Your program can also call system
procedures that monitor the operation of a running program or processor. If the
monitored program stops or a processor fails, your program can determine this fact.
For more information on System procedures, see the Guardian Procedure Calls
Reference Manual and the Guardian Programmers Guide for your system.
TAL Run-Time Library
The TAL run-time library provides routines that:
Initialize the Common Run-Time Environment (CRE) when you use D-series
compilers (as described in the TAL Programmers Guide)
Prepare a program for SQL statements (as described in the NonStop SQL
Programming Manual for TAL)