Packed Decimal is Not (Quite) Dead!: How Floating-Point Decimal Greatly Simplifies and Speeds Decimal Computation

Typical business calculations using packed decimal arithmetic are difficult -- so much so that most programmers rely on a high-level language compiler like PL/I, COBOL, or C to do the arithmetic. But packed decimal arithmetic is quite difficult, expensive and slow.

Decimal floating-point is an attractive(and surprisingly simple) alternative. in this session we will describe the underlying simplicity of decimal floating-point arithmetic, and show how a typical calculation using packed decimal data and arithmetic can be simplified (and speeded!)  by using decimal floating-point.

Tracks: Application Technologies and Architectures, z/OS Systems Programming, z/VM Systems Programming and zNextGen