COBOL Modernization

A company that needs to process millions of transactions per second can do this most efficiently and reliably with a mainframe, so while COBOL and Mainframe Computing Skills might be Old, they remain Essential. In the mainframe world languages like COBOL dominate as they provide the best way of processing large databases and, with systems like CICS, the best way of managing high volume transactions.

COBOL is widely available, not just confined to mainframes, but it is rarely used on other computer types. Most modern programmers haven't even heard of COBOL, if they have then they perceive it as obsolete, picturing its programmers using punched cards or green screens as they did 40 years ago. Yet it continues to thrive, and if written with Micro Focus Enterprise Developer or similar IDEs it is a modern language with all the development support that modern programmers expect.

Because COBOL has been around for a long time, there are many tools to help you write it. MANASYS Jazz, for example, will write Batch, Classical CICS, and Web Service programs for you, starting from data definitions. For example, Bridging Two Worlds (3 1/2m video) shows the process by which MANASYS Jazz turns 21 lines of data definition into 2500 lines of COBOL, 320 lines of JSON, and 1000 lines of C#, allowing the web service and client to be developed in a day or two, not weeks or months. So how do we develop web services and their clients like that shown in the video? Following articles will show you, starting with an introduction to Web Services and how they work.

In the meantime, see our web page if you want more information about MANASYS Jazz and to see what it can do. Contact us if you have any questions, or connect with us on LinkedIn. Download a free evaluation copy to try out MANASYS Jazz yourself.