The Future Of Cobol Essay, Research Paper

The future of COBOL

COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) was the first widely used high-level programming language for business applications. Many payroll, accounting, and other business application programs written in COBOL over the past 35 years are still possible that there are more existing lines of programming code in COBOL than in any other programming language has been update over the years.

Today we already stepped in internet Age, most of old style business also have been combined with intent to create the e-business, so we suppose COBOL is not useful anymore but before we made a conclusion we?d better know how?s COBOL worked, and how?s COBOL will work in future then we could make decision. COBOL was an effort to make a programming language that was like natural English, easy to write and easier to read the coed after you?d written it, and COBOL is one of the oldest, and arguably the most successful and popular of all programming languages. The earliest version of the language, COBOL-60 and -61, evolved to the COBOL-85 standard sponsored by the Conference on Data Systems Language (CODASYL). COBOL has been declared dead so many times since April 1968 till now, but COBOL lives on. Nevertheless, the somber pronouncements of COBOL?s demise continue, and the pace has picked up with such developments as clients-sever technology, Visual Basic, Java, and the chaos associated with the Year-2000 problems.

Since the year 2000 (Y2K) problem is common in many business applications and most of these are written in COBOL, programmers with COBOL skills have become sought after by major corporations and contractors. A number of companies have updated COBOL and sell development tools to meet the requirements about COBOL applications using in e-business.

Since the COBOL use for Oriented of business it was mostly serviced for big company. Even now many large companies have a huge pool of COBOL-based applications that constitute their core business systems, even in today?s e-business. (For instances, The Seagram Co. Ltd., The Federal Express, and Canada Trust. Etc.) If COBOL declare to death the alternative is too awful to contemplate, the number of lines of COBOL application code ranges from 200 billion to 5 trillion. Rewriting application in Java may give purists a feeling of euphoria, but in reality no one is doing this, or if you feel really masochistic, you could try and rewrite them in C++.

Every big company has to start from where it is. This is means taking old, arthritic applications and ?wrapping? them so they become a stable starting point for future developments. These applications also need to be integrated, and e-business means that these systems need to be integrated and connected to the outside world. As a matter of fact, this is the most pressing issue facing many large companies, forget about Java and XML, many IT manger would be happy if their applications could talk to each other and provide an interface to the outside world.

Several computer companies already developed some economical, practical product could combine with COBOL to working in e-business. At August 14,1995 Micro Focus announced Visual Object COBOL? version 1.0 for window? 95, in 1998 CASEGN system Ltd announces that COBOL for windows is available free-of-charge to promote the use of COBOL as a powerful windows95/NT graphical development tool, now IBM introduced VisualAge COBOL 2000 enterprise for OS/2 and Windows NT, and other COBOL supporters like CORBRA, MERANT, etc. those supporter?s software are enhanced following features: a working station development environment that enables you to seamlessly develop, modify, reengineer, maintain, modernize, and port host applications right at your desktop.

As far as I am concerned, there is no good reason not use one of the contemporary versions of COBOL for developing the server end of e-business applications, and in reality many organizations will. After all, Merant is growing at around 40 percent a year, so quite a few companies must be using its products.

As is usually the case in this industry, someone will spend years cobbling together a Java-based e0business, applying copious amounts of tape and string, and by the skin of their teeth get something that performs a useful business function; and we will all marvel at it. The fact that it could have been written in COBOL in a tenth of the time will be totally overlooked: after all, wee must celebrate how rapidly we are advancing in this industry. We might not buy so much otherwise. So it?s not surprising that they would have a favorable.

After I do this research the following statement is a useful advice indeed. What the legacy argument does not address is the substantial amount of new code being written today in small organizations ? organizations that never have had, and never will have, a mainframe. Many of these organizations will work hard to avoid writing any of the applications that COBOL has been used for, because it?s much more economical to buy a package to do the job. But if a fledgling 10-person company with one programmer (or a modest 100-person company with 5-10 programmers) does decide to write an application system today for its PC-based. Internet-aware environment, my guess is that the odds of COBOL being used are about one in a thousand. So if you are a large company and you want to move forward from where you are without taking huge risks, COBOL is worth at least a look.