IBM Takes System/z To the Cloud With COBOL Update

hypnosec writes "IBM is taking its COBOL server platform to the next level by updating the mainframe platform in a bid to extend and enable its mainframes to host cloud based applications and services. The latest update is looking to add XMLS Server as well as Java 7 capabilities to the System/z COBOL platform and this update would extend the overall lifespan of COBOL by taking it up a notch and gearing it towards the cloud computing arena."

Comments

Anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

A stake and garlic? Anyone?

Re:Anyone?

[Freddybear]

mmmm, steak and garlic. Oh, wait...

Re:Anyone?

[Aighearach]

        PERFORM 3 TIMES
              DISPLAY "Die!" WITH NO ADVANCING
        END-PERFORM.
        STOP RUN.

Re:Anyone?

[93 Escort Wagon]

COBOL on the other hand has well designed base of apps that have stood the test of time and still process the most important financial transactions

Not to mention a mean developer age of 73...

Re:Anyone?

[JPLemme]

Yes, although there are dozens of lines of code omitted (ENVIRONMENT DIVISION), and in my experience COBOL's direct printing and console commands were never used. You either wrote to a file and used a third-party reporting tool to print or you interacted with the screen using CICS. But I imagine if the commands were really never used they'd have been deprecated by now, so YMMV.

Re:Anyone?

[OhANameWhatName]

is that as a not a developer, that was perfectly readable. Is that actually COBOL

Pretty much. Try translating it into any other language and making it readabe. That's something that all of the snarkers will never know about COBOL .. it actually encourages the use of extremely self explanatory variable names and code which is easily readable. File format definitions in COBOL far surpass anything which has happened since (in terms of configuration readability and changability) and printed output can be generated like butter. 88 levels (by definition) make code more readable .. and no other language has ever integrated this concept.

If you have a look at reporting today, there's nothing as capable as COBOL at spitting out reams upon reams of reports. The kind of regulatory reporting required by governments and tax agencies. Trying pushing 30,000 pages out of any modern reporting software and see how far you get. COBOL systems chew up and spit out this kind of work. It's not a question of the cost of upgrading to something better, if you need 20 boxes of paper reports .. there is nothing to replace COBOL.

The haters will hate and there's 2 bazillion idealistic programmers all lined up behind them laughing at COBOL's flaws. If you want it to die, you'll need to replace it first. Because to date, nobody's done that .. 50 YEARS.

And BTW: If you want to earn a shedload of cash as a contractor, there's no better language to learn.

Re:Anyone?

[Aighearach]

I hate to admit knowing this, but modern COBOL lets you omit most of that. Depending on the exact compiler used, you might be able to omit all the boilerplate. But even stricter ones let you keep it to 3 or 5 lines, something in that ballpark. Not really less boilerplate than most compiled languages.

That said though, it was a snippet not a program so nothing was forgotten or omitted.

Re:Anyone?

[TeknoHog]

Not to mention a mean developer age of 73...

Get off of my lawn, sonny. If it was good enough for Grace Hopper, it's good enough for me. BTW, do you want to get paid next month, or should I put a bug fix into that code I wrote 40 years ago?

I thought "mean" referred to the arithmetic average, rather than personality...

Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Extended COBOL lifespan?!

THANKS OBAMA! :(

Re:Ugh

[DarkOx]

Never a death panel when you need one.

Re:Ugh

[ColdWetDog]

The damned thing's immortal.

IBM has found the secret to everlasting life!

Surely, there is some money to be made here?

Re:Ugh

[ebno-10db]

The damned thing's immortal.

And C is so much different? COBOL may be 54 years old, but C is not exactly a kid at 44. Sure we've had updated versions and C++, but so has COBOL (COBOL 2002 is OO). BTW, I've loved C since I first started using it, and I'm not sure I'd even recognize COBOL if it fell on me (not just a figure of speech if you're using big card decks), but just saying.

Old programming languages never die (at least once entrenched), but this zombie effect wasn't appreciated when COBOL was first spec'd, because HLL's hadn't been around long enough. The fact that in 1959 COBOL was supposed to be just the first of three successive language definitions is instructive. From Wikipedia:

it was decided to set up three committees: short, intermediate and long range (the last one was never actually formed). It was the Short Range Committee, chaired by Joseph Wegstein of the US National Bureau of Standards, that during the following months created a description of the first version of COBOL. The committee was formed to recommend a short range approach to a common business language. The committee was made up of members representing six computer manufacturers and three government agencies. ... The intermediate-range committee was formed but never became operational. In the end a sub-committee of the Short Range Committee developed the specifications of the COBOL language.

And this is why people choose IBM

[phantomfive]

IBM is more expensive, but you can be sure they have more commitment to backwards compatibility than anyone else. If you build on the right IBM technologies, you can be sure your code will be working 30 years from now. No need to rewrite ever few years with the latest fad.

Re:And this is why people choose IBM

[DarkOx]

Agree, never my snarky post higher up in this discussion. The fact is COBOL is proven to scale and does the things its really good at; probably better than anything else. IBM mainframe MVS platforms are probably the best damn environment to run it in to with the longest stretch of forward and backward compatibility to maximize your software development investment. Generally the calls to kill off COBOL come from the ignorant.

Rebranding

[Chaos1]

IBM should take to calling it Cloudframe. Because everything needs a cloud based marketing spin.

Re:What?

[Freddybear]

Are you kidding? There's sixty years worth of legacy applications programs out there in COBOL.
Yeah, it sucks from a Computer Science perspective, but business programming ain't Computer Science.

COBOL code is not too different

[plopez]

from much of the code I have seen written in Java, C#, Python, or Perl. Heck, VB was based Basic which drew on COBOL and Fortran, since it was a teaching language and so it had much of the syntax and idioms of those languages. Anytime you use VB your are using a form of COBOL.

BTW if you want to check out something cool, check out Fortran 2008. It supports the OO paradigm, has built in parallel processing support, and is backward compatible to Fortran 77. It's not dying anytime soon either.

Re:COBOL code is not too different

[93 Escort Wagon]

Anytime you use VB your are using a form of COBOL.

Anytime you use Visual Basic, you are incrementing the counter keeping track of exactly which Circle of Hell you'll eventually be deposited into.

Have any of the people griping USED COBOL?

[khb]

The 2002 version of the standard added object features. While not my first choice of languages, it is typically not cheaper nor safer to rewrite large amounts of working tested code. Yes, you might do better with a clean sheet of paper and a decade or so, but most IT organizations don't have that luxury.

My favorite COBOL nerdy feature died many versions of the Standard ago (MOVE CORRESPONDING). It was my favorite not because it was a terrific feature, but it was just so unique to COBOL.

Cloud computing is, as a business model, a return to mainframe timesharing services such as dominated in the original COBOL and PL/I eras. It really is not a stretch to see IBM update their zSeries environment to easily enable leveraging the COBOL code base.

Yes, you can (and more cheaply per IBM MIP) run Linux on your zSeries hardware, so you can mix and match (write new applications, or layers in newer environments) ... but there is no need to toss out dull boring functional code that just happens to be business critical.

No doubt the sufficiently intrepid IT staffer could rewrite all the COBOL in Haskell or Perl .. (or for extra credit in REXX) but would it really be an improvement? Indeed, just validating that the new code is logically equivalent to the original code for ALL input sets would be a huge investment ... never underestimate the cost (or importance) of Test and Validation.

COBOL: Cloud Oriented Business Objective Language?

[non-e-moose]

Change the acronym, now relevant to OO-fans.