[CentOS] COBOL

Thu May 22 07:19:44 UTC 2008
Ian Blackwell <ian at ikel.id.au>

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