So much COBOL
There are estimated to be 250 billion lines of legacy
code in the world, 200 million of which are written
in COBOL. The problem is there are not the young COBOL
programmers coming through, while the old hands who
wrote all this legacy code are either dead, retired
or coming up to retirement.
An estimate recently from the US - Gartner Inc reckoned
that the average age of a mainframer was 55. This all
sounds a bit worrying if like most Enteprise houses
you have this glut of COBOL code and an ageing development
team. What to do ?
OPTIONS
1. New applications - write these in Java or
new packages - get into WEBSPHERE or BIZTALK and move
into the brave new Business Integration world - leave
COBOL behind in your legacy applications. Good
idea
2. Legacy applications - Re-engineer
completely in modern software - for most this would
be extremely costly - time consuming and a diversion
from the important current Business and IT drivers.
Not an option many will
take.
3. Hook up with a code conversion company -
not recommended - you'll get a big pile of spaghetti
java or the like that will be as unmaintainable as your
current COBOL - this really
is a big hole to fall down.
4. Ring Fence your COBOL
legacy applications and develop new applications
using SOA and Business Integration
techniques - recommended,
you'll have to either train up new COBOL staff (there
will always be people to do it at the right price),
rely on the Contractor market (again they'll do it if
the price is right) or go for the India etc option (popular
and cheaper, companies now have a lot of experience
of this and are better positioned to choose when its
best to go offshore). But the legacy COBOL will not
grow dramatically and should be relatively straightforward
to manage. Remember this code has in
many instances developed and evolved over DECADES -
unless it really is on its last legs it should be better
to keep the wealth of detail.
MIGRATION
If still on OS/390 you could have a read of the following:
BCS
migration article
If you are interested in DB2 for z/OS v8.1 migration: Triton
Consulting paper on the enhancements in DB2 for z/OS v8.1