Java and COBOL share some common principles. The languages aren't the point, the platform are. They both run on high performance / reliable virtual machines, al

Java and COBOL share some common principles. The languages aren't the point, the platform are. They both run on high performance / reliable virtual machines, allowing a superior scalability, reliability and long term compatibility to what could be achieved with more coupled approaches. Likewise, running COBOL tied to an x86 instance could be feasible but would be missing the point entirely. You could more or less consider a JEE application server as a software implementation of a mainframe. Java AS (Websphere, Weblogic, JBoss...) are essentially what killed the mainframe and midrange (IBM i / AS/400) in the enterprise. So yeah, Java/JEE, COBOL, RPG: different languages, same goals under the hood.