Xref: utzoo alt.cobol:149 comp.infosystems:98 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!hacgate!ashtate!atsun!dwiggins From: dwiggins@atsun.a-t.com (Don Dwiggins) Newsgroups: alt.cobol,comp.infosystems Subject: Re: What's really wrong with COBOL? Message-ID: Date: 7 Apr 90 03:51:56 GMT References: <420@mck-csc.UUCP> <8458@hubcap.clemson.edu> Sender: news@ashtate.UUCP Organization: Ashton-Tate, Inc. Lines: 30 In-reply-to: billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu's message of 22 Mar 90 02:18:38 GMT From article <420@mck-csc.UUCP>, by jw@mck-csc.UUCP (Jeffrey Weiss): > > Now, I'm a reasonably hi-tech guy, not long out of Engineering school, but > I need real arguments (that make business sense) to give to my boss, the CEO. > And, are there viable alternatives such as "re-engineering" the existing code > and investing in tools that make the COBOL environment more palatable? You seem to have provoked a storm; I'll try to give a response that makes business sense. I think that it does make sense to migrate away from Cobol, but not too fast. The migration should be part of the company's overall plan of improving its software engineering capability, and should take other elements of the plan into account, e.g. what platforms are we writing software on and for? What skills do our folks have now, what are they willing to learn, what kind of experience is possessed by the kind of people we'd like to hire? How do we plan to maintain, enhance, and obsolete our current software base? You get the idea; language religion plays a fairly small part in it. Yes, there are re-engineering and reverse engineering tools for Cobol, in fact more for it than any other language (after all, there's a huge vein of spaghetti Cobol waiting to be mined). In addition to restructuring programs so they can be more easily maintained, design information can be extracted to simplify porting to another language. Hope this helps, -- Don Dwiggins "Solvitur Ambulando" Ashton-Tate, Inc. dwiggins@ashtate.a-t.com