Dick, others - Question for you. Consider that a company's custom-written
software is one of its largest hidden investments. To do it successfully, a
company must not only invest a lot of programmer time, but time and effort
from people all over the organization to dig in an really understand the
requirements. For many companies in retrospect COBOL has been very
successful because they haven't had to rewrite the programs in many years.
You may argue that maybe that was too long, but I would respond that it is
better to rewrite for business reasons rather than because of technological
obsolescence. You also must pick a popular language so you have many
experienced programmers available to hire. Now, which language would you
advise a large company to select? Do you feel that the "new COBOL" has
emerged, a general-purpose business language that will be around for years,
widely available?
- Visual Basic - Hey even Microsoft is upsetting this one as it moves to
.NET. Need I elaborate on how you will be eternally wedded to MS.
- C++ - Seems to be doing okay at the moment, but several years ago there
were a lot of articles predicting its demise.
- PL/SQL - Excellent to cure specific performance problems, but use it for
everything? Well you better not carp about Oracle licensing fees.
- Java - This is the current bet here. However, it seems somewhat
cumbersome as a COBOL replacement. It seems as if your programmers need to
be fairly knowledgeable technically.
- C# - Does it have a future beyond being a Java spoiler?
- Of course, before you count out COBOL, you should review all the
languages over the years that were going to replace COBOL, but are now
answers to computer trivia questions - Pascal, Ada, Modula-2, and the list
just goes on.
Dennis Williams
DBA, 40%OCP
Lifetouch, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2002 5:52 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Tom,
IMHO, if Babette's organization "see themselves as *never* leaving the
Cobol
arena" then it's time to dust off the resume as that organization will
become
extinct. No one that I know of is learning Cobol anymore and there are no
classes at the local universities on the subject. Fortran classes and
programmers are also becoming a scarce resource to find which is why we left
ManMan and TurboImage for PeopleSoft and Oracle.
Dick Goulet
____________________Reply Separator____________________
Author: "Mercadante; Thomas F" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 11/18/2002 5:03 AM
Babette,
The decision really comes down to the organization. If they see themselves
as *never* leaving the Cobol arena, and they have an ample supply of Cobol
programmers, then they should stay with it.
What you could do is to make friends with the applications people, and show
them how PL/SQL works. What you will find is that they will take to PL/SQL
like a fish to water. And pretty soon, more and more PL/SQL packages will
be written that are simply called by the Cobol programs. Cobol would then
be a simple entry point to the database - able to interface nicely with the
operating system (reading and writing flat files, producing reports and
forms), while the majority of the logic may be written in PL/SQL.
Maybe, just maybe, the person making the decision see's no benefit to using
PL/SQL. And given your local labor market, maybe he's right!
Tom Mercadante
Oracle Certified Professional
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2002 1:18 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
"Khedr, Waleed" wrote:
>
> Cobol! Again!:(
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: Friday, November 15, 2002 5:24 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
>
> I just found out today that we have a major development initiative that is
> starting and they are planning on using Pro*Cobol to develop the
> application. (my head is still shaking in disbelief!!!)
>
> So we will have a Java front-end, invoking MQ series that will go across
to
> the mainframe for MQ series to invoke Pro*Cobol programs that will then do
> the processing (accessing data and doing calculations) and then return
data.
>
> If anyone has been in this or a similar situation, please help.
> I need some really good arguments as to why we should put the business
logic
> into PL/SQL instead of Pro*Cobol.
>
> I understand the reason we are using Oracle is that the director has 15
> years experience with it and loves it. Aaargh!!!
>
> thanks
> Babette
>
May I play the devil's advocate? Even if Pro*Cobol seems to be a weird
choice, there may be a case for not coding the logic in PL/SQL :
database portability. I have heard recently of a very, very, very big
company dumping Oracle in favour of DB2. Reason ? Cost. I guess that in
such a case, porting a Pro*Cobol program is easier than PL/SQL.
--
Regards,
Stephane Faroult
Oriole Software
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