Microsoft Makes Push for COBOL Migration 487
geoff313 writes: "It would appear that Microsoft
is making a real push for the migration of existing COBOL applications to Windows and their .Net platform. Micro Focus, a company who makes
COBOL migration products and last year became a member of Microsoft's Visual
Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program, announced their Net
Express with .Net product, a plug-in to Microsoft Visual Studio .Net
2003. It allows for COBOL code to be integrated and manged with other code in Visual Studio. In an interview with eWeek he declares that 'Micro Focus and Microsoft are bringing the mainframe to Windows and .Net'. This makes me wonder, are there any Open Source projects working to provide for this eventual migration? Gartner estimates that over 75% of business data is processed by an approximately 200 billions lines of COBOL, so
this seems like a huge potential market to lose to Microsoft."
More Links Needed (Score:0, Funny)
Just announced... (Score:5, Funny)
Available 3rd quarter 2005. Look for Visual COBOL# in 2007.
manged?? (Score:4, Funny)
I think the correct spelling is mangled.
200 billion lines? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh no! (Score:5, Funny)
I DO NOT want to have to debug visual COBOL!
Re:As much as I hate MS this is very smart. (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds about right... (Score:4, Funny)
That's right, folks!
What about (Score:3, Funny)
Re:200 billion lines? (Score:2, Funny)
Emulation? (Score:4, Funny)
Manged (Score:2, Funny)
From dictionary.reference.com:
Manged:
adj. Refers to anything that is mangled or damaged, usually beyond repair.
Gotta love a binary shreader...
Re:Sounds about right... (Score:3, Funny)
Hairless, oozy, and irritated? You're talking about Ballmer, right?
If it's not Consolidated Lint, it's just fuzz!
Re:200 billion lines? (Score:3, Funny)
The Latest From Microsoft R&D... (Score:3, Funny)
I guess it started with the active directory thing that starts to move everything about an individual user back to a central server. Then grabbing the Citrix technology to essentially turn a PC into a dumb terminal. Now all of a sudden they no longer want to hide the Command Line Interface and are coming out with a new one with supposedly decent scripting capabilities. Now this!
Well, you know you can sort of steer a lucid dream anywhere you want to go, so here is what's coming out soon from Redmond:
Punch Cards: No more worrying if that last CD backup you did of your system is really readable. Now anything on your system can be easily converted to 80 column Hollerith format. The new WinPunch will attach to a standard USB port and allow for both punching and reading of standard IBM punch cards. Special programs will allow your keyboard to be used to directly punch these cards, or you can program your own virtual IBM 029 drum card to speed up repetitive tasks.
Paper Tape: For you PDP and other non-IBM users there is WinPT which will have similar I/O capabilities but use either roll based paper tapes or the much preferred fold style. Thanks to new fabrication techniques and years of work by the Microsoft R& D lab much higher densities will be available than those you remember.
WinHenge: Tired of using those old techniques to figure out when the summer solstice will begin?.....
Re:200 billion lines? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm confused. (Score:3, Funny)
Did the author intend to say managed or mangled ?
Re:if it ain't broke, don't fix it! (Score:5, Funny)
Circle Ten? (Score:4, Funny)
A joke. (Score:5, Funny)
"Where am I?" he said.
As soon as he spoke, everyone started cheering and congratulating each-other.
"What is going on?" he said, amidst the brouhaha.
"You see, this is many thousands of years after your time," told him one man in a white labcoat. "The medicine has made huge advancements, and now we are able to revive people who have died millenia ago."
"Wow," said the old programmer, "this is really great. But why me?"
"Well, you see, this is the year 9999 -- we are facing the Y10K problem, and your resume said that you know COBOL..."
Re: Bah humbug... (Score:2, Funny)
> Aren't most COBOL applications deployed on big iron?
They're anticipating that you'll have to have a mainframe on your desktop to run the next release of Windows...
C0b0l is teh l33t (Score:3, Funny)
000200 PROGRAM-ID. COBALISTEHL33T.
000300
000400*
000500 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
000600 CONFIGURATION SECTION.
000700 SOURCE-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.
000800 OBJECT-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.
000900
001000 DATA DIVISION.
001100 FILE SECTION.
001200
100000 PROCEDURE DIVISION.
100100
100200 MAIN-LOGIC SECTION.
100300 BEGIN.
100400 DISPLAY " " LINE 1 POSITION 1 ERASE EOS.
100500 DISPLAY "What they think they d0ing?! C0b0l is teh l33t! Someone tell microsoft to go back to the crap 86, we don't need him with our cool VT100 world!"
LINE 15 POSITION 10.
100600 STOP RUN.
100700 MAIN-LOGIC-EXIT.
100800 EXIT.
Re:What are the Linux COBOL solutions? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Just announced... (Score:2, Funny)
No need to waste the extra two columns for the century.
heard about Object Oriented Cobol? (Score:5, Funny)
It's called "ADD ONE TO COBOL GIVING COBOL."
(Yes, this joke is at least 15 years old...)
Just what we needed (Score:3, Funny)
The stability of Microsoft combined with the elegance of COBOL.
Re:A joke. (Score:0, Funny)
Re:Try x86 assembler.NET :) (Score:4, Funny)
That reminded me of a web page I saw once, which took a lot of Googling to find.
In some perverse sort of way, this .NET web page using x86 assembler [worldonline.dk] is beautiful :)