Re: [CentOS] COBOL
Michael wrote: Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux? I think you would be better served looking for a flavour of COBOL that provides portability via platform independence, rather than choosing your platform and then a COBOL to suit. We use ACUCOBOL from Acucorp for this reason. Our code, once compiled, will run on many different platforms without us doing anything. Acucorp had the write once run everywhere idea well before Java did. Also, anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? The Fujitsu people only support Red Hat, and said I'd be on my own with Centos. In other words if it works, then I don't care about Fujitsu support. I know some of you are thinking, did someone say COBOL? Nobody uses COBOL anymore! If so, let me say You are wrong. Many large corporations are taking their old business logic that was written in COBOL decades ago, and moving it to new modern platforms, like Linux. Programatically giving these applications a GUI face-lift, while maintaining their original business logic. I know because many companies pay me to do just that. I have a client that wants to use Centos Linux with Fujistu Cobol, and Fujitsu says it's gotta be Red Hat, any help will much appreciated. I know COBOL is still out there, and the latest tools for GUI development let you build apps that users can't recognise as COBOL apps. Business logic in COBOL is rock solid and won't be replaced anytime soon. With a GUI front-end, why change? Thanks, Cheers, Ian ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
RE: [CentOS] COBOL
On : Wed, 21 May 2008 16:57:37 -0400, Ross S. W. Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would just buy the RH licenses for the project. CentOS may work well for development and testing platform, but the production code should be on fully supported RHEL. Having been on RHEL support, and having had occasion to use that support quite extensively, I have formed an opinion to the contrary. My experience did not lead me to the conclusion that licensed RHEL distributions, together with the highest available level of support offered by RedHat, provided any measurable benefit over CentOS and community support. In fact, my experiences with RedHat Support, which were not in the least bit negative, led me to abandon RedHat, first to WhiteBox and thence to CentOS. The practical matter is that RedHat Support is provided in layers, with minimally experienced person filtering support calls. This was, and I expect still is, the case regardless of what level of support is purchased. By the time a serious problem got to a person in RedHat who possessed anywhere near my own experience with the systems under consideration either I had already solved the issue (usually with help from Goole or project specific mailing lists), identified a satisfactory workaround, or had determined that the problem was unsolvable in the timeframe required with the resources available. RedHat support people were unfailingly polite and helpful, but the fact remains that the value for fee was not evident. Immediate support (which is really the only kind that matters to an organization, anything else is really a development project of some sort) for open source systems comes in two basic flavors, enlightenment and custom consulations. Enlightenment is provided by informed individuals who are willing to share their knowledge and experience with others who problems are products of their own ignorance. Members of this mailing list have provided enlightenment to me on many, many occasions. Custom work is either provided from ones own resources or is contracted out to people who really know the system you need fixed/enhanced within a minimal amount of time. I have engaged open source software authors to enhance their products with features that our firm desired on many occasions and in fact am doing so with one at the present time. I cannot perceive any measurable advantage to having a support contract for OSS, other than perhaps with the actual core team of the exact product you are using. RH is a packager, which is not to denigrate either the value of the integration work that they do, or its technical merit. Nonetheless, most OSS support problems are either resolved by re-reading the specific package documentation, having an obscure feature identified and explained by someone that knows about it, bypassing the impediment, or when all else fails writing and submitting your own patch. -- *** E-Mail is NOT a SECURE channel *** James B. Byrnemailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Harte Lyne Limited http://www.harte-lyne.ca 9 Brockley Drive vox: +1 905 561 1241 Hamilton, Ontario fax: +1 905 561 0757 Canada L8E 3C3 ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
RE: [CentOS] COBOL
James B. Byrne wrote: On : Wed, 21 May 2008 16:57:37 -0400, Ross S. W. Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would just buy the RH licenses for the project. CentOS may work well for development and testing platform, but the production code should be on fully supported RHEL. Having been on RHEL support, and having had occasion to use that support quite extensively, I have formed an opinion to the contrary. My experience did not lead me to the conclusion that licensed RHEL distributions, together with the highest available level of support offered by RedHat, provided any measurable benefit over CentOS and community support. In fact, my experiences with RedHat Support, which were not in the least bit negative, led me to abandon RedHat, first to WhiteBox and thence to CentOS. [woeful story of RH layered support] I cannot perceive any measurable advantage to having a support contract for OSS, other than perhaps with the actual core team of the exact product you are using. RH is a packager, which is not to denigrate either the value of the integration work that they do, or its technical merit. Nonetheless, most OSS support problems are either resolved by re-reading the specific package documentation, having an obscure feature identified and explained by someone that knows about it, bypassing the impediment, or when all else fails writing and submitting your own patch. I agree support contracts from Redhat or Microsoft or Novell provide very little value on the surface, but there are advantages to these contracts besides phone support. 1) Third party vendor support. These contracts and installations will allow your software, hardware and development vendors to provide you with the support you need/want. 2) Service agreements. Just like there is an EULA there is also a vendor agreement within the contracts. Read them carefully. In there there are terms that the vendor agrees to meet that are beneficial to the long term support of their product. 3) Indemnification. Not all vendors provide this, but most do. This will assure you, management and legal that your company will not be held legally accountable for any intellectual property or copyright violations that may occur due to improper licensing on behalf of the software vendor. 4) Compliance. Most regulatory controls require that there be some level of service contract on the software that constitutes your primary production environment. This doesn't have to be a blanket policy, just your primary production systems. The bread n' butter so to speak. There is a lot more to a software support plan then just phone support. -Ross __ This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the original and any copy or printout thereof. ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
RE: [CentOS] COBOL
We use COBOL on Unix. I have worked with NCR/ATT Unix and since 1995 have been supporting COBOL on SCO Unix. I am in the process of porting to CentOS and RHEL. We use RM/COBOL. It is supported by Liant at www.liant.com We use it for internal and Internet programming. They also support Web Services using COBOL. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Michael Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 1:47 PM To: centos@centos.org Subject: [CentOS] COBOL Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux? Also, anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? The Fujitsu people only support Red Hat, and said I'd be on my own with Centos. In other words if it works, then I don't care about Fujitsu support. I know some of you are thinking, did someone say COBOL? Nobody uses COBOL anymore! If so, let me say You are wrong. Many large corporations are taking their old business logic that was written in COBOL decades ago, and moving it to new modern platforms, like Linux. Programatically giving these applications a GUI face-lift, while maintaining their original business logic. I know because many companies pay me to do just that. I have a client that wants to use Centos Linux with Fujistu Cobol, and Fujitsu says it's gotta be Red Hat, any help will much appreciated. Thanks, -- Michael Anderson, J3k Solutions Sr.Systems Programmer/Analyst 832.515.3868 ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] COBOL
On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 13:47 -0500, Michael wrote: Also, anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? The Fujitsu people only support Red Hat, and said I'd be on my own with Centos. In other words if it works, then I don't care about Fujitsu support. Apparently Oracle is the only ISV that's figured out that CentOS *is* RHEL. -- Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams [EMAIL PROTECTED] PLEASE don't CC me; I'm already subscribed signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] COBOL
On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 01:47:09PM -0500, Michael wrote: pay me to do just that. I have a client that wants to use Centos Linux with Fujistu Cobol, and Fujitsu says it's gotta be Red Hat, any help will much appreciated. Have the client buy ONE RedHat license so that if they do ever have an issue then they can replicate it on the RedHat machine and get Fujitsu support :-) -- rgds Stephen ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] COBOL
Tony Placilla [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sr. UNIX Systems Administrator The Sheridan Libraries Johns Hopkins University On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 2:47 PM, in message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux? Also, anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? The Fujitsu people only support Red Hat, and said I'd be on my own with Centos. In other words if it works, then I don't care about Fujitsu support. I know some of you are thinking, did someone say COBOL? Nobody uses COBOL anymore! If so, let me say You are wrong. Many large corporations are taking their old business logic that was written in COBOL decades ago, and moving it to new modern platforms, like Linux. Programatically giving these applications a GUI face-lift, while maintaining their original business logic. I know because many companies pay me to do just that. I have a client that wants to use Centos Linux with Fujistu Cobol, and Fujitsu says it's gotta be Red Hat, any help will much appreciated. Thanks, A datapoint the advice you get is worth what you pay. Where I work (in a Uni library) we encounter the same issue. The ISVs *only* support certify against RHEL. However, I do my development, test, staging, etc. on CentOS that I keep version compliant with upstream. I have had *no* problems. My short answer is, if it works on RHEL, it works on CentOS. Again, YMMV if it breaks, you get to keeps the pieces. ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] COBOL
On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 13:47 -0500, Michael wrote: Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux? It really depends on two things: compatability of the COBOL flavors, legacy and Fujitsu, and competency of the folks doing the work in both legacy and new platforms. I can't answer the specifics of your query though. Last time I did these things was the 1984 - 1994 timeframes. But I can say it was duck soup. Naturally, it wasn't Fujitsu cobol. A few more words later on. Also, anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? The Fujitsu people only support Red Hat, and said I'd be on my own with Centos. In other words if it works, then I don't care about Fujitsu support. I know some of you are thinking, did someone say COBOL? Nobody uses COBOL anymore! If so, let me say You are wrong. Many large corporations are taking their old business logic that was written in COBOL decades ago, and moving it to new modern platforms, like Linux. Programatically giving these applications a GUI face-lift, while maintaining their original business logic. I know because many companies pay me to do just that. I have a client that wants to use Centos Linux with Fujistu Cobol, and Fujitsu says it's gotta be Red Hat, any help will much appreciated. I don't know if it's still around, but my efforts were using MicroFocus Cobol, which (IIRC) was eventually bought by SCO. I was porting mainframe application development to a three-tiered development architecture. Target apps would run on IBM mainframes, be developed, tested, debugged on DOS PCs (later on real UNIX System V). If MF COBOL is still available, might be worth a look. It was very good then. Should be very good now if still around. It was *very* compatible with the IBM flavor(s). The only significant changes were in the Configuration Section and adding screen-specific code. Of course, no i'net then, so I imagine there will be more stuff added to support net stuff. The most trouble, as I recall, was that most programmers were just so-so even at COBOL and had no concept of hardware issues or underlying OS issues at all. I can't tell you how many times I had to help various programmes out just because of mixing modes of read statements - read vs read into. Of course, I had a strong assembly background too, so I saw the implications (read locate mixed with read move mode as implied by the two forms of the COBOL read) that they may not have had the background to recognize. If the folks doing the work a competent on both platforms, or the team community knowledge includes that expertise and it's freely shared, should be just a lot of mechanical effort after the first couple of programs are converted. Thanks, HTH -- Bill ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] COBOL
On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 14:51 -0400, Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams wrote: Apparently Oracle is the only ISV that's figured out that CentOS *is* RHEL. I was just told in no uncertain terms that it is not RHEL. ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] COBOL
On Wed, 21 May 2008 15:12:58 -0400 William L. Maltby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If MF COBOL is still available, might be worth a look. It was very good then. Should be very good now if still around. It was *very* compatible with the IBM flavor(s). I vaguely recall reading that there is some kind of a licensing gotcha in later versions of MicroFocus Cobol that apparently was not present in earlier versions. Anyone considering a MF Cobol installation may want to research the licensing situation carefully. I don't remember any specifics about it at all, other than what I have written above. It may have been resolved, or it may not have existed in the first place and be simply someone's misunderstanding of the situation. But it's worth checking out. -- MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Melville Sask ~ http://www.melvilletheatre.com ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] COBOL
On Wed, May 21, 2008, Scott Nelson wrote: On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 13:47 -0500, Michael wrote: Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux? Probably not hard at all -- I can't imagine a cobol compiler/runtime/ executable needing anything in HP/UX that isn't in Centos (or any other Linux for that matter). The bigger problem is getting the COBOL vendor to port to the version of Linux you want, Centos in this case. [...] anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? I have not, but we do use AcuCOBOL version 4 from AcuCorp which was recently bought by MicroFocus (they are up to version 8 now: http://www.microfocus.com/products/extend/ ) It's been years since I did serious work on COBOL, originally on Burroughs Medium Systems, then Ryan McFarland, and most recently Microfocus. The biggest problems I have seen recently with COBOL run times is that they were built on old libc5 with calls to errno which broke on recent versions of CentOS, and SuSE Linux Enterprise 9/10. The workaround on these was a couple of lines in the startup scripts: LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1 export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL Bill -- INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC URL: http://www.celestial.com/ PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way Voice: (206) 236-1676 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820 Fax:(206) 232-9186 But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. -- Frederic Bastiat, The Law ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] COBOL
On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 14:26 -0500, Scott Nelson wrote: On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 13:47 -0500, Michael wrote: Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux? Probably not hard at all -- I can't imagine a cobol compiler/runtime/ executable needing anything in HP/UX that isn't in Centos (or any other Linux for that matter). The bigger problem is getting the COBOL vendor to port to the version of Linux you want, Centos in this case. [...] anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? I have not, but we do use AcuCOBOL version 4 from AcuCorp which was recently bought by MicroFocus (they are up to version 8 now: http://www.microfocus.com/products/extend/ ) Scott I also used AcuCobol, after I left The Big Company, on an SCO micro-based application. It was also quite decent. No surprises discovered. snip sig stuff -- Bill ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
RE: [CentOS] COBOL
Michael wrote: Just curious, maybe some old timers could help me out. I am working with a company that is migrating 20 years of Mainframe Software Development to Unix, HPUX. How much harder would it be to go to Linux, Centos Linux? Also, anyone have any experience with Fujitsu Cobol on Centos? The Fujitsu people only support Red Hat, and said I'd be on my own with Centos. In other words if it works, then I don't care about Fujitsu support. I know some of you are thinking, did someone say COBOL? Nobody uses COBOL anymore! If so, let me say You are wrong. Many large corporations are taking their old business logic that was written in COBOL decades ago, and moving it to new modern platforms, like Linux. Programatically giving these applications a GUI face-lift, while maintaining their original business logic. I know because many companies pay me to do just that. I have a client that wants to use Centos Linux with Fujistu Cobol, and Fujitsu says it's gotta be Red Hat, any help will much appreciated. I would just buy the RH licenses for the project. CentOS may work well for development and testing platform, but the production code should be on fully supported RHEL. I haven't done Cobol and Fortran programming since college where I learned these on the DEC VAX VMS systems. It was interesting to see VMS also running on the DEC Alphas at the time since I always associated it with minis. -Ross __ This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the original and any copy or printout thereof. ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] COBOL
On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 12:21 PM, James Bunnell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I was just told in no uncertain terms that it is not RHEL. True, but the formal releases of CentOS are 100% compatible with the corresponding upstream release. (That's the whole point.) IOW, if it works in RH, it should work on CentOS. There are some exceptions for code that explicitly checks for RH. However, I am repeating what I have seen here - there are other, much better informed sources here than I. mhr ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
