Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux?
Also, anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? The Fujitsu people only support Red Hat, and said I'd be on my own with Centos. In other words if it works, then I don't care about Fujitsu support.
I know some of you are thinking, did someone say "COBOL"? Nobody uses COBOL anymore! If so, let me say "You are wrong". Many large corporations are taking their old business logic that was written in COBOL decades ago, and moving it to new modern platforms, like Linux. Programatically giving these applications a GUI face-lift, while maintaining their original business logic. I know because many companies pay me to do just that. I have a client that wants to use Centos Linux with Fujistu Cobol, and Fujitsu says it's gotta be Red Hat, any help will much appreciated.
Thanks,
On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 13:47 -0500, Michael wrote:
Also, anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? The Fujitsu people only support Red Hat, and said I'd be on my own with Centos. In other words if it works, then I don't care about Fujitsu support.
Apparently Oracle is the only ISV that's figured out that CentOS *is* RHEL.
On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 12:21 PM, James Bunnell jbunnell@belencomputers.com wrote:
I was just told in no uncertain terms that it is not RHEL.
True, but the formal releases of CentOS are 100% compatible with the corresponding upstream release. (That's the whole point.)
IOW, if it works in RH, it should work on CentOS. There are some exceptions for code that explicitly checks for RH. However, I am repeating what I have seen here - there are other, much better informed sources here than I.
mhr
On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 01:47:09PM -0500, Michael wrote:
pay me to do just that. I have a client that wants to use Centos Linux with Fujistu Cobol, and Fujitsu says it's gotta be Red Hat, any help will much appreciated.
Have the client buy ONE RedHat license so that if they do ever have an issue then they can replicate it on the RedHat machine and get Fujitsu support :-)
Tony Placilla aplacilla@jhu.edu Sr. UNIX Systems Administrator The Sheridan Libraries Johns Hopkins University
On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 2:47 PM, in message
48346E2D.4080203@j3ksolutions.com, Michael michael@j3ksolutions.com wrote:
Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux?
Also, anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? The Fujitsu people only support Red Hat, and said I'd be on my own with Centos. In other words if it works, then I don't care about Fujitsu support.
I know some of you are thinking, did someone say "COBOL"? Nobody uses COBOL anymore! If so, let me say "You are wrong". Many large corporations are taking their old business logic that was written in COBOL decades ago, and moving it to new modern platforms, like Linux. Programatically giving these applications a GUI face-lift, while maintaining their original business logic. I know because many companies pay me to do just that. I have a client that wants to use Centos Linux with Fujistu Cobol, and Fujitsu says it's gotta be Red Hat, any help will much appreciated.
Thanks,
A datapoint & the advice you get is worth what you pay.
Where I work (in a Uni library) we encounter the same issue. The ISVs *only* support & certify against RHEL. However, I do my development, test, staging, etc. on CentOS that I keep version compliant with upstream.
I have had *no* problems.
My short answer is, if it works on RHEL, it works on CentOS.
Again, YMMV & if it breaks, you get to keeps the pieces.
On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 13:47 -0500, Michael wrote:
Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux?
It really depends on two things: compatability of the COBOL flavors, legacy and Fujitsu, and competency of the folks doing the work in both legacy and new platforms.
I can't answer the specifics of your query though. Last time I did these things was the 1984 - 1994 timeframes. But I can say it was duck soup. Naturally, it wasn't Fujitsu cobol.
A few more words later on.
Also, anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? The Fujitsu people only support Red Hat, and said I'd be on my own with Centos. In other words if it works, then I don't care about Fujitsu support.
I know some of you are thinking, did someone say "COBOL"? Nobody uses COBOL anymore! If so, let me say "You are wrong". Many large corporations are taking their old business logic that was written in COBOL decades ago, and moving it to new modern platforms, like Linux. Programatically giving these applications a GUI face-lift, while maintaining their original business logic. I know because many companies pay me to do just that. I have a client that wants to use Centos Linux with Fujistu Cobol, and Fujitsu says it's gotta be Red Hat, any help will much appreciated.
I don't know if it's still around, but my efforts were using MicroFocus Cobol, which (IIRC) was eventually bought by SCO. I was porting mainframe application development to a three-tiered development architecture. Target apps would run on IBM mainframes, be developed, tested, debugged on DOS PCs (later on real UNIX System V).
If MF COBOL is still available, might be worth a look. It was very good then. Should be very good now if still around. It was *very* compatible with the IBM flavor(s).
The only significant changes were in the Configuration Section and adding screen-specific code. Of course, no i'net then, so I imagine there will be more stuff added to support net stuff.
The most trouble, as I recall, was that most programmers were just so-so even at COBOL and had no concept of hardware issues or underlying OS issues at all. I can't tell you how many times I had to help various programmes out just because of mixing modes of read statements - "read" vs "read into". Of course, I had a strong assembly background too, so I saw the implications (read locate mixed with read move mode as implied by the two forms of the COBOL read) that they may not have had the background to recognize.
If the folks doing the work a competent on both platforms, or the team "community knowledge" includes that expertise and it's freely shared, should be just a lot of mechanical effort after the first couple of programs are converted.
Thanks,
HTH
On Wed, 21 May 2008 15:12:58 -0400 "William L. Maltby" CentOS4Bill@triad.rr.com wrote:
If MF COBOL is still available, might be worth a look. It was very good then. Should be very good now if still around. It was *very* compatible with the IBM flavor(s).
I vaguely recall reading that there is some kind of a licensing "gotcha" in later versions of MicroFocus Cobol that apparently was not present in earlier versions.
Anyone considering a MF Cobol installation may want to research the licensing situation carefully. I don't remember any specifics about it at all, other than what I have written above. It may have been resolved, or it may not have existed in the first place and be simply someone's misunderstanding of the situation. But it's worth checking out.
On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 13:47 -0500, Michael wrote:
Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux?
Probably not hard at all -- I can't imagine a cobol compiler/runtime/ executable needing anything in HP/UX that isn't in Centos (or any other Linux for that matter). The bigger problem is getting the COBOL vendor to port to the version of Linux you want, Centos in this case.
[...] anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos?
I have not, but we do use AcuCOBOL version 4 from AcuCorp which was recently bought by MicroFocus (they are up to version 8 now: http://www.microfocus.com/products/extend/ )
Scott
On Wed, May 21, 2008, Scott Nelson wrote:
On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 13:47 -0500, Michael wrote:
Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux?
Probably not hard at all -- I can't imagine a cobol compiler/runtime/ executable needing anything in HP/UX that isn't in Centos (or any other Linux for that matter). The bigger problem is getting the COBOL vendor to port to the version of Linux you want, Centos in this case.
[...] anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos?
I have not, but we do use AcuCOBOL version 4 from AcuCorp which was recently bought by MicroFocus (they are up to version 8 now: http://www.microfocus.com/products/extend/ )
It's been years since I did serious work on COBOL, originally on Burroughs Medium Systems, then Ryan McFarland, and most recently Microfocus. The biggest problems I have seen recently with COBOL run times is that they were built on old libc5 with calls to errno which broke on recent versions of CentOS, and SuSE Linux Enterprise 9/10. The workaround on these was a couple of lines in the startup scripts:
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1 export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL
Bill
On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 14:26 -0500, Scott Nelson wrote:
On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 13:47 -0500, Michael wrote:
Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux?
Probably not hard at all -- I can't imagine a cobol compiler/runtime/ executable needing anything in HP/UX that isn't in Centos (or any other Linux for that matter). The bigger problem is getting the COBOL vendor to port to the version of Linux you want, Centos in this case.
[...] anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos?
I have not, but we do use AcuCOBOL version 4 from AcuCorp which was recently bought by MicroFocus (they are up to version 8 now: http://www.microfocus.com/products/extend/ )
Scott
I also used AcuCobol, after I left "The Big Company", on an SCO micro-based application. It was also quite decent. No surprises discovered.
<snip sig stuff>
Michael wrote:
Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux?
Also, anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? The Fujitsu people only support Red Hat, and said I'd be on my own with Centos. In other words if it works, then I don't care about Fujitsu support.
I know some of you are thinking, did someone say "COBOL"? Nobody uses COBOL anymore! If so, let me say "You are wrong". Many large corporations are taking their old business logic that was written in COBOL decades ago, and moving it to new modern platforms, like Linux. Programatically giving these applications a GUI face-lift, while maintaining their original business logic. I know because many companies pay me to do just that. I have a client that wants to use Centos Linux with Fujistu Cobol, and Fujitsu says it's gotta be Red Hat, any help will much appreciated.
I would just buy the RH licenses for the project. CentOS may work well for development and testing platform, but the production code should be on fully supported RHEL.
I haven't done Cobol and Fortran programming since college where I learned these on the DEC VAX VMS systems. It was interesting to see VMS also running on the DEC Alphas at the time since I always associated it with minis.
-Ross
______________________________________________________________________ This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the original and any copy or printout thereof.
Michael wrote:
Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux?
I think you would be better served looking for a flavour of COBOL that provides portability via platform independence, rather than choosing your platform and then a COBOL to suit. We use ACUCOBOL from Acucorp for this reason. Our code, once compiled, will run on many different platforms without us doing anything. Acucorp had the write once run everywhere idea well before Java did.
Also, anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? The Fujitsu people only support Red Hat, and said I'd be on my own with Centos. In other words if it works, then I don't care about Fujitsu support.
I know some of you are thinking, did someone say "COBOL"? Nobody uses COBOL anymore! If so, let me say "You are wrong". Many large corporations are taking their old business logic that was written in COBOL decades ago, and moving it to new modern platforms, like Linux. Programatically giving these applications a GUI face-lift, while maintaining their original business logic. I know because many companies pay me to do just that. I have a client that wants to use Centos Linux with Fujistu Cobol, and Fujitsu says it's gotta be Red Hat, any help will much appreciated.
I know COBOL is still out there, and the latest tools for GUI development let you build apps that users can't recognise as COBOL apps. Business logic in COBOL is rock solid and won't be replaced anytime soon. With a GUI front-end, why change?
Thanks,
Cheers,
Ian
We use COBOL on Unix. I have worked with NCR/AT&T Unix and since 1995 have been supporting COBOL on SCO Unix. I am in the process of porting to CentOS and RHEL. We use RM/COBOL.
It is supported by Liant at www.liant.com We use it for internal and Internet programming. They also support Web Services using COBOL.
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Michael Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 1:47 PM To: centos@centos.org Subject: [CentOS] COBOL
Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux?
Also, anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? The Fujitsu people only support Red Hat, and said I'd be on my own with Centos. In other words if it works, then I don't care about Fujitsu support.
I know some of you are thinking, did someone say "COBOL"? Nobody uses COBOL anymore! If so, let me say "You are wrong". Many large corporations are taking their old business logic that was written in COBOL decades ago, and moving it to new modern platforms, like Linux. Programatically giving these applications a GUI face-lift, while maintaining their original business logic. I know because many companies pay me to do just that. I have a client that wants to use Centos Linux with Fujistu Cobol, and Fujitsu says it's gotta be Red Hat, any help will much appreciated.
Thanks,
Hi, Michael
In begining excuse me my English. I know it is not my strongest side. At secoundary scool from 1985 to 1988 I learnt COBOL in Hungary in an IBM 360 clone called R20. It was a standad mainframe of the socialist part of Europe. Two mounth ago I decided I relearn it by OpenCobol. Because of my two children and so much work it is now only a dream. But I have a question: is the OpenCobol with a Linux Distibution (perhaps Debian) a solution for your problem (maybe???)? I am sure the Identification and Environment Division will snugly must rewrite.
Best all, and have a real succes!
Zoli
2008/5/21, Michael michael@j3ksolutions.com:
Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux?
Also, anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? The Fujitsu people only support Red Hat, and said I'd be on my own with Centos. In other words if it works, then I don't care about Fujitsu support.
I know some of you are thinking, did someone say "COBOL"? Nobody uses COBOL anymore! If so, let me say "You are wrong". Many large corporations are taking their old business logic that was written in COBOL decades ago, and moving it to new modern platforms, like Linux. Programatically giving these applications a GUI face-lift, while maintaining their original business logic. I know because many companies pay me to do just that. I have a client that wants to use Centos Linux with Fujistu Cobol, and Fujitsu says it's gotta be Red Hat, any help will much appreciated.
Thanks,
-- Michael Anderson, J3k Solutions Sr.Systems Programmer/Analyst 832.515.3868
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
-
Bill Campbell -
Frank Cox -
Ian Blackwell -
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams -
James Bunnell -
MHR -
Michael -
Michael Peterson -
Ross S. W. Walker -
Scott Nelson -
Stephen Harris -
Tony Placilla -
William L. Maltby -
Zoltán Horváth