Division One SSG

Table of Contents

• Who Is This For?
• Why Division One?
  • 1. Self-Documenting Structure
  • 2. Record-Oriented Content Processing
  • 3. Division Architecture
  • 4. Enterprise-Grade Reliability
• Quick Start
  • Prerequisites
  • Build & Run
• Architecture
• Features
• COBOL Division Primer
• Requirements
• Part of poly-ssg
• License

Self-documenting static site generator in COBOL.

Let divisions organize. Let records structure. Let pages compile.

Who Is This For?

• COBOL practitioners seeking modern build tooling that speaks their language

• Enterprise developers wanting bank-grade reliability for content pipelines

• Language preservationists exploring COBOL beyond transaction processing

• Polyglot SSG explorers via poly-ssg-mcp integration

Why Division One?

1. Self-Documenting Structure

COBOL’s English-like syntax makes site configuration readable without comments:

       IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
       PROGRAM-ID. SITE-CONFIG.

       DATA DIVISION.
       WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
       01 SITE-METADATA.
          05 SITE-TITLE      PIC X(80) VALUE "My Technical Blog".
          05 SITE-AUTHOR     PIC X(40) VALUE "J. Developer".
          05 BASE-URL        PIC X(120) VALUE "https://blog.example.com".
          05 BUILD-DRAFTS    PIC 9 VALUE 0.

2. Record-Oriented Content Processing

COBOL’s native record handling maps perfectly to front matter and structured content:

       01 POST-RECORD.
          05 POST-TITLE      PIC X(200).
          05 POST-DATE       PIC 9(8).
          05 POST-TAGS.
             10 TAG-ENTRY    PIC X(30) OCCURS 10 TIMES.
          05 POST-BODY       PIC X(65535).

3. Division Architecture

Site structure mirrors COBOL’s four-division model:

COBOL Division	Site Component
IDENTIFICATION	Site metadata, author, version
ENVIRONMENT	Input/output paths, build targets
DATA	Content records, templates, assets
PROCEDURE	Build logic, transformations, rendering

4. Enterprise-Grade Reliability

The same precision that processes billions in daily transactions ensures your content pipeline never loses a byte. No truncation. No encoding errors. No silent failures.

Quick Start

Prerequisites

• GnuCOBOL 3.2+ (cobc)

• POSIX shell environment

Build & Run

# Compile the generator
cobc -x -o divisionone src/divisionone.cob

# Initialize a new site
./divisionone --init my-site

# Build the site
./divisionone --build my-site

Architecture

                    ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
                    │           COBOL Runtime                 │
                    └─────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                      │
          ┌───────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────┐
          ▼                           ▼                           ▼
   ┌─────────────┐            ┌─────────────┐            ┌─────────────┐
   │   CONFIG    │            │   CONTENT   │            │  TEMPLATE   │
   │   READER    │            │   PARSER    │            │   ENGINE    │
   │  (ENVIRON)  │            │   (DATA)    │            │  (PROCED)   │
   └──────┬──────┘            └──────┬──────┘            └──────┬──────┘
          │                          │                          │
          └──────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┘
                                     ▼
                            ┌─────────────┐
                            │    FILE     │
                            │   WRITER    │
                            └─────────────┘

Features

• Incremental builds — only recompile changed content records

• Parallel section processing — leverage COBOL’s section-based execution

• Fixed-width field validation — catch content length issues at build time

• COPY statement templating — reusable content structures via copybooks

• EBCDIC/ASCII agnostic — works with any character encoding

COBOL Division Primer

Division	Purpose	Division One Usage
IDENTIFICATION	Program metadata	Site name, version, author attribution
ENVIRONMENT	I/O configuration	Source paths, output directories, asset locations
DATA	Variable declarations	Content records, template variables, configuration
PROCEDURE	Executable logic	Build steps, content transformation, file generation

Requirements

• GnuCOBOL 3.2+ — open-source COBOL compiler

• Optional: cobc-debug for development builds

Part of poly-ssg

Division One integrates with the polyglot SSG ecosystem through the Model Context Protocol:

# Via poly-ssg-mcp
mcp call poly-ssg divisionone:build --path ./my-site

See poly-ssg-mcp for unified access to 28+ static site generators across 17 languages.

License

SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT OR AGPL-3.0-or-later

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Copyright © 2025 Jonathan D.A. Jewell