Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Makes Push for COBOL Migration
geoff313 writes: "It would appear that Microsoft
is making a real push for the migration of existing COBOL applications to Windows and their .Net platform. Micro Focus, a company who makes
COBOL migration products and last year became a member of Microsoft's Visual
Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program, announced their Net
Express with .Net product, a plug-in to Microsoft Visual Studio .Net
2003. It allows for COBOL code to be integrated and manged with other code in Visual Studio. In an interview with eWeek he declares that 'Micro Focus and Microsoft are bringing the mainframe to Windows and .Net'. This makes me wonder, are there any Open Source projects working to provide for this eventual migration? Gartner estimates that over 75% of business data is processed by an approximately 200 billions lines of COBOL, so
this seems like a huge potential market to lose to Microsoft."
Aren't most COBOL applications deployed on big iron?
.NET solutions will be deployed on big iron; rather, my assumption is that we are dealing with standard x86 server farms running Windows Server.
.NET may find their projects more maintainable (if only because the number of COBOL coders is declining fast), but because of the underlying platform, they'll be introduced to a world of hassles, too, and I doubt businesses with mission-critical applications (like the big banks and insurance companies and what-not currently using COBOL on mainframes) will go for that.
I doubt any Microsoft solution could honestly compete with the scalability and reliability of a true mainframe, and it doesn't state anywhere within the article that these
Anybody who migrates to
How seriously do you think this will really be taken up? I posit: "not much".
Microsoft Visual COBOL++.NET 2003
Available 3rd quarter 2005. Look for Visual COBOL# in 2007.
His name was Robert Paulsen.
It allows for COBOL code to be integrated and manged with other code in Visual Studio.
I think the correct spelling is mangled.
Has anyone used Tiny Cobol or Open Cobol
This is just going to result in the resurgance of COBOL! Not the migration away from it! BASIC was literally almost DEAD until microsoft came out with Visual Basic. What do you think this will do for COBOL!
I DO NOT want to have to debug visual COBOL!
As long as it works and there are no issues like Y2K why would you get rid of something that works? It's not like new machines wont run COBOL programs.
I don't know, that paper clip was pretty damn innovative. I mean, who else would think to make something like that?
Information week has an article from Nov. 3, 2003 noting that 38% of Gartner's shares are owned by Microsoft, Oracle, Dell and a few other major players. All of whom would presumably benefit from what Gartner has to "report" about their respective fields of interest.
Considering that Gartner has been charged with bias from some circles already, this can't help things.
Who Owns Gartner?
Oh please! Sun Microsystems has had rehosting solutions for COBOL on the mainframe to their platforms for years. Look at:
- http://www.sun.com/migration/mainframe/sunps/
- http://www.sun.com/migration/mainframe/
This isn't innovative at all. Unless, of course, the only part of IT you have ever been involved with is PC's running Windows and a couple of small servers and don't know what the data center is all about.In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
Migrating COBOL apps to PC platforms won't happen on a large scale for two reasons:
I worked on the support side of a mainframe for sixteen years and my experience was that, so long as the reports showed up on the users desk in the morning, there was no problem no matter how many problems there were. Why would anyone invest any time and/or effort fixing something that "works" when there are so many newer and more interesting ways to waste money and make life harder for the support staff...
Good thing I'm not bitter.
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
one would be better off leaving it on the mainframe until peices of it could be rewritten in a more modern language.
I work in the health insurance industry. We run millions of health care transactions per day through our mainframes. We use midrange and distributed systems (Sun primarily, along with a few Windows systems) to bring the transactions in the door and do the business intelligence work afterwards. Last year we start our planning to move off the mainframe. It is exactly what you described. Take pieces (the easy ones first) and rewrite and rehost. We probably won't finish the effort before 2008, or so. Of course, our current transactional system has been in place on mainframes since about 1978. We haven't missed a weekly payment cycle in more than 15 years. Our Windows boxes (even the supposedly high availability ones) miss cycles on about a monthly basis. We have no intention of even considering Windows for the rewrite effort. We're looking at Sun/Solaris, IBM/AIX and Linux clusters.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
that reason is reliability. if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
note, y2k required fresh re-writes on many mainframe systems, and those old COBOL guys had a field day. but notice too, that they didn't go thru the trouble of migration then, even tho the amounts spend would have justified it!
if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Just some thoughts,
.. who would really want to do this for 30 year old code that works fine where it is.
..
1) Migration assumes that, the source code is available (in some cases it it may not be, but businesses will still run the program as it works, and wont spend good money recoding something that is not broke)
2) The target system behaves exactly like the source system. If not then you are redeveloping for the new system
3) Performance. Mainframes may have less relative power than some PC's or servers, but what they do they do well. (Would you trust printing bank statements for all your customers on a Windows machine ?). Our old mainframe used to run 500 users, and had less power+disc than my Windows XP machine. Can I run 500 users on this PC ? No, certainly not under windows (any varient).
4) Reliability. Most cobol applications (one assumes) are running on mainframes (or super minis). As such uptime can be figured in months, (not days as a certain Software Suppliers average uptime for web servers is). With some runs of cobol programs taking days, do you want to run them on something that might crash half way through.
5) Functionality. Yes, some of the functions of some cobol programs could be re-developed in less time/space than they currently are. There are reasons people may not redevelop. Some are for cost. The old adage "if it ain't broke, dont fix it" applies. The code still functions, dont frig with it.
6) Code size. Older mainframes optimised their code very very well. Can you honestly say that modern compilers (ie MS) do so as well? Whats the odds that the 50KB cobol program will be 5MB when recoded, with DLL's and pretty graphics.
7) Other features, such as use of tape drives to read data from. Disc drives that do hardware searching for you (ie ICL mainframes had CAFS, which the controller was given selection criteria and it read the disc for data matching). Such technology is not available on modern PC's or Servers "off the shelf". Thus there may be hidden costs in duplicating the environment, or even migrating the old data to a new environment.
Where I work, we are leaving old systems where they are. New replacements are purchased that have the duplicated or similar functions. It is in most cases not cost effective to "port" old code over.
finally
8) Programmer availability. How many now learn cobol at school/college/university ? most are into Java, C++, etc. Who wants to learn a dead end language when you can have a nice language that is more modern and will earn you money (and look good on your C.V.) Cobol programmers are a dying breed.
AFAIK when M$ developed .net, they studied a large number of programming languages (java, c++, cobol, etc) and then developed the .net languages from there. Now, all the .net languages are meant to be able to be compiled and executed using one single run-time environment, so in order to get that to work the .net languages have...'converged'. (Must avoid using the word 'assimilated' here ;)
.net languages are not.
:)
Visual Basic and Visual C++ where very distinct languages. The
VB.net has become more like java. C# has become more like java, etc etc. I have no doubt that COBOL.net will be exactly the same.
The point is: You cannot take a 10 year old COBOL program and expect it to be able to compile using COBOL.net. You will probably have to rewrite the entire application into a sortof half mishmash of COBOL, VB and java ( -> COBOL.net
First, you have to understand this isn't simply an issue of porting something from one platform to another. If it were, it would've been done a long time ago. Anybody else remember when industry pundits were talking about the last of the mainframes being unplugged in 1999 so we wouldn't have to deal with with Y2K? Sure, a few places migrated off the 'frame, but not many. And I would argue that any company capable of doing so, did so before Y2K.
Basically, there are two types of COBOL systems on the 'frame:
And if it did, what have you gained? I've heard it said that if Windows is a car, UNIX is a racecar... and z/OS is a semi. While Intel or minicomputer (sorry, that's prbably an outdated term) systems can match mainframe MIPS, they can't match its throughput. So suddenly your batch payroll that ran for ten minutes on the 'frame and churns out the paychecks takes all day. Don't think many companies will make that trade.
And the open-source COBOL efforts handle none of the batch or online extensions, so they're almost useless for migrating any of these systems.
So basically you undergo a huge, years-long set of projects and by the time you're done, you may have something that's cheaper, but is most likely just less reliable.
Garg
Garg
Alumnus, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
On the eve of the New Year 2000, an old programmer went out of his house to go to a party, but was run over by a bus before he could get there. His vision went dark, but then he saw wonderful white light and people in white clothes leaning over him.
"Where am I?" he said.
As soon as he spoke, everyone started cheering and congratulating each-other.
"What is going on?" he said, amidst the brouhaha.
"You see, this is many thousands of years after your time," told him one man in a white labcoat. "The medicine has made huge advancements, and now we are able to revive people who have died millenia ago."
"Wow," said the old programmer, "this is really great. But why me?"
"Well, you see, this is the year 9999 -- we are facing the Y10K problem, and your resume said that you know COBOL..."
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
It's called "ADD ONE TO COBOL GIVING COBOL."
(Yes, this joke is at least 15 years old...)
Unless MS and MF have created a really good replacement for JCL, and the ability to seamlessly convert between EBCDIC and ASCII on the fly, and seamlessly access all the data stored in all the DASD in all the datacenters, gin-joints, and big-iron holdout citadels spread throughout the world, it just won't matter.
JCL is the biggest holdup, I would think. COBOL programs perform several steps to a piece of data, kick out output files, and pass control to JCL, which, depending on the return code of the COBOL, will call one of several different alternatives. Having one stinking program run on your PC and having to hand-code all the JCL into batch filesis a massive waste of time. Not to mention that JCL is far more robust then an MS-DOS batch file. Finally, most PC's just don't have the throughput to match an IBM Mainframe with DASD on channel. Finally, you can tell an IBM shop that Windows is far more stable then it was 10 years ago, but it still doesn't compare to a mainframe for reliablility _and_ stability. A Windows server with five 9's reliablity isn't worth shit if the registry is corrupted. That just doesn't happen on mainframes.
But this is the standard that we have to adhere to because we provide claims payment, treatment authorization and such for insurance beneficiaries. Our SLA's with our customer only allow us 30 minutes of downtime for the entire system per week. That includes the mainframe sysplex, the point of sale system, the web access for doctors and pharmacies, the interactive voice systems and all of the claims entry points.
It's not about my data center kicking your data center's ass. This is the sort of hardware and software reliability that big data centers have to have. And this whole thread started from the idea that running COBOL within .NET was somehow innovative. The big iron shops (Sun, HP, IBM) have had COBOL migration or rehosting programs for years. I pointed out that the guy who thought this was innovative probably run a couple of windows PC's and a server. While that is necessary in the grand scheme of things, it isn't a really likely place to learn about big, mission critical IT. I used to work for a small business. We provided network services and integrations to other small and medium businesses. I thought I knew what reliability, scalability and uptime was all about until I went to work in a place where people literally might die if the system was down.
UNIX is so close to the mainframe in reliability terms these days that there is literally no way to differentiate. I can engineer a Solaris, AIX or HP-UX system to 5 9's reliability, and have as much, or more, processing power as a mainframe sysplex. But, the problem is all that COBOL code. It has to be moved. The original design of much of the world's core finance and insurance systems happened in the 1970's. The original designers are gone. The code is not well documented or commented because the people who wrote it, for the most part, didn't think it would still be running in COBOL, on mainframes, in 2003. Moving it in one big jump is scary, and high unlikely to happen.
We will move it, because you can't really innovate with COBOL anymore. Programmers are harder and harder to find, the SME's are retiring, and the best and brightest of the new generation are going to distributed platforms, especially Java. So, instead, we will move it one sub-system at a time to a new platform. Either a UNIX or Linux cluster, and the foundation will probably be Java. There is no confidence in the data center in Windows computing. We have had too many bad experiences with the few systems we have tried out. Bad by our standards. Granted, Windows can now achieve 3 9's, with good engineering and a LOT of tender loving care. 5 9's amounts to roughly 5 minutes of downtime per year. 3 9's amounts to roughly 500 minutes of downtime per year. 500 minutes of downtime means we might miss our SLA's for as many 15 weeks a year, depending on how the downtime worked out. That's a lot of lost revenue. And patients who can't get their treatment authorized on time or doctors not getting paid on time.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.