The Micro Focus XDBC interface is designed to let users of Windows, Java applications, or the Micro Focus XDBC query tool read and write indexed files (as well as relative and sequential files) as if they were tables in a relational database.
Since none of these file formats is relational to begin with, Micro Focus XDBC's job is to present COBOL files in a table format that can be accessed by applications like Microsoft Excel or ColdFusion.