[CentOS] COBOL

Wed May 21 18:56:12 UTC 2008
Tony Placilla <aplacil1 at jhuadig.admin.jhu.edu>




Tony Placilla <aplacilla at 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 at j3ksolutions.com>, Michael <michael at 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.