Babette, We are rolling out a *major* app with 14-16 production databases. All of the *core* processing is in COBOL. The app has a Web front end.
COBOL won't die. I picked up a bumper sticker, from Fujitsu's booth at Oracle World last week, that asks "got COBOL?". - Kirti PS : I did COBOL for 12 years :-) -----Original Message----- Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 5:54 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Thanks for all the comments.... I did do a little more digging. I found out that the reason they are using Cobol is that there are Cobol programs that have the business logic for doing benefit calculations. They do not want to re-write those modules. So they are doing the entire application in Cobol and only using the database as a place to save the data. As far as staff and skills, the current job market has an excess of persons with PL/SQL skills. So I don't think the decisions was made with any respect to how many people will be able to maintain this over the next 10 years. The number of people with COBOL skills is declining at the organization. But if they keep doing new development in COBOL, then maybe they will be able to convince the younger programmers to learn it :-P I will have to look into the MQ-Series module for Oracle that was mentionned. -----Original Message----- WILLIAMS Sent: Monday, November 18, 2002 8:09 AM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L Babette - For some code, PL/SQL will offer significantly better performance. For other code it may not matter so much. One of an organization's biggest hidden investments is their code. If they feel COBOL is where they prefer to invest, that isn't the end of the world. For one thing, it doesn't tie them as closely to Oracle as coding everything in PL/SQL would. If you want better reasons not to do this, you need to nose around and find who the players are and what is their motivation. Arguments succeed much better when you know your audience. Dennis Williams DBA, 40%OCP Lifetouch, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- Sent: Friday, November 15, 2002 4:24 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 [snipped] -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com -- Author: Babette Turner-Underwood INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California -- Mailing list and web hosting services --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing). -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com -- Author: Deshpande, Kirti INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California -- Mailing list and web hosting services --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
