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Questions tagged [cobol]

For questions about the COBOL programming language

COBOL is one of the oldest programming languages. Its name is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments.

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Why the scorn for COBOL?

When people mention COBOL, it's usually either met with a snort or groan. I don't know much about COBOL, but I've seen some programs written in it. I can see that it's wordy, and to uninitiated eyes such as mine, unintelligible. But, really, aren't…
Barry Brown
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Is COBOL still worth learning?

Does learning COBOL still make sense?
apaderno
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How can there be so much "business logic" for a company that they cannot drop their old COBOL/mainframe code?

Something which has always confused me is this. I keep hearing about how these big, old corporations which were around in the 1950s (for example) and early on started using COBOL-coded business logic on IBM mainframes, which are apparently unable to…
user15080516
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Rewriting IBM assembler + COBOL in C++

I work as a rental agent / manager for a car rental company that is running on a rental system that was written in 1972. I decided that maybe it was time for an update. For a bit of background, here is a short example of the madness that we have to…
David Stone
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Other than for legacy software, are there reasons for using COBOL?

COBOL is still (heavily?) used for financial computing. It is an old language, and AFAIK most programmers hate, or at least dislike, COBOL. This brings a question: is the only reason COBOL is still used that legacy software uses it, or does it have…
Anto
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Are 70% of programs/business applications/something based in COBOL?

I heard this number and a quick google search reveals a whole lot of touting this number and absolutely zero data (honestly most articles promoting COBOL read like 95% propoganda). Perhaps it's true in an extremely limited context of banking…
Ben Brocka
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Having 2 Initialize Paragraphs in 1 COBOL program

I am designing a COBOL program that does 2 things. 1 reads specific rows from a table, and inserts a new row based on the original. 2 reads different rows from the same table, and updates those rows. Is it bad standards to have 2 initialization…
Frantumn
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Best solution for a large database transaction

I have a COBOL CICS process running on a mainframe legacy system. The process does over 2K DMLs in a highly concurrent DB environment. After each CRUD operation, the result is used to make further computations followed by CRUD operations again. This…
AllTooSir
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What's new in PL/I, DB2, and S/390 assembler?

I have an upcoming technical interview with a former employer that will focus on PL/I, DB2, and ISPF. The job will be with systems that I architected and wrote myself 20 years ago. The few years of professional programming that I did since then was…
MF Dinosaur
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Developer productivity Cobol versus C#

We are doing a cost benefit analysis on a migration project. It would be nice to be able to say that future changes will be x percent cheaper due to the migration. Does anyone have any experience or know of any study that shows what benefit we could…
Shiraz Bhaiji
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COBOL program or JCL?

I have to perform 3 tasks: an insert, a delete, and a write I'm not sure what the best way to do this is. My mainframe program design skills aren't too tight, so I was looking for advice. Could I avoid doing a COBOL program for this? The way I see…
Frantumn
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What are the three main technologies for a redesign of a COBOL legacy system

There exists an application that reports financial data of a bank to a national bank (all located in Europe). It is a legacy system that is written mainly in COBOL. Only the user interface is written in Java. The business logic is stored as complex…
mrsteve
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Worth it to Learn an Archaic Language?

Possible Duplicate: Is COBOL still worth learning? One of my better college professors often talked about the advantages of learning an archaic language (COBOL or SAP ABAP for example) in one's free time because of the advantages it provides when…
Yottagray
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COBOL & Mainframe & Business

I have made a search on a Hong Kong job seeking website. There numerous of jobs titled "Computer Analyst". These are the requirements of the job: Over 3 year experience relevant working experience in IBM Mainframe environment. University degree in…
Johnson
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Feasibility of continuous delivery with a mixture of development platforms

What are the major obstacles (and potential solutions, if known) for implementing "continuous delivery" software development when an application relies on varied programming languages or modules... especially when the same version-control and/or…
PattMauler
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