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How much do tools such as this one help with reuse or porting of real COBOL applications, as opposed to textbook examples? As I understand it, many COBOL progr
by wsh 6y ago
How much do tools such as this one help with reuse or porting of real COBOL applications, as opposed to textbook examples?
As I understand it, many COBOL programs of current practical interest make extensive use of data management and transaction processing facilities that aren’t part of the COBOL language itself.
Can anyone share their experiences? For example, what fraction of the COBOL modules in a typical application would be able to be translated by a compiler that doesn’t handle statements such as “EXEC CICS” or “EXEC DLI”?
- marktangotango 6y agoDon't forget to include 'EXEC SQL'. For IBM mainframe Cobol, how many progrmams DON'T depend on the mainframe environment specific features/services? Probably zero or close to it. I think the environment for other vendors (Microfocus, Accucobol) is a bit more forgiving, I don't have experience with them so can't say for sure. Another, maybe more subtle mainframe pecularity is how it maps dataset (ie file names) names to 'dsnames' (Cobol source code construct) at runtime, tied together by JCL.
- tyingq 6y agoThere's also lots of Adabase, IDMS, IMS, third party schedulers, and maybe some assembler sprinkled around. And lots of smaller problems like printing, EBCDIC centric code, record based files, etc. I assume Microfocus provides solutions for some of this.
- Spearchucker 6y agoMicrofocus did a thing where you could port COBOL TO .NET. I haven't worked with it myself but know Barclays used it to migrate a lot of COBOL in the mid 2000s.