Developing COBOL off m/f, but for m/f use 1

[Yordaman]

At present, practically all development of COBOL pgms that will ultimately reside on the m/f is performed on the same m/f. This includes code-cutting and the initial testing.

This draws on the m/f's resources (which are expensive!) and turnaround time isn't fast (compared to PC-based IDEs), so I'm looking to develop a new model for application development whereby the initial code production and testing is performed in an off m/f environment (to save on the m/f use), and only migrated onto the m/f for the later stages of testing and live implementation.

So, I'm looking for off m/f COBOL development tools/options that sit alongside the m/f without many issues (code will need to be brought down for changes, etc, so COBOL that's compatible in both environments is a 'must').

I've used MFE before and this is certainly an option. I've heard about a COBOL flavour of the WSAD IDE, but only in passing, not from anyone who's actually done it.

Questions:
Any other similar experiences to myself?
Has anyone used WSAD for COBOL development? If so, any comments?
Other than MFE and WSAD, are there any other key players in this market?
Any other related comments, please?

 

[Truusvlugindewind]

No other players as far as I know. You'll have to choose between Micro Focus and IBM.

Please keep us/me informed.

 

[webrabbit]

Micro Focus COBOL (with the right directives) is "guaranteed" to be 100% compatible with m/f COBOL, including CICS I even believe that it will generate m/f object code, which mearly needs to be uploaded and linked.

You can also run Micro Focus COBOL on your pc and access a database on the m/f.

As a point of interest, Micro Focus has just acquired its major rival.

 

[razalas]

Pardon my ignorance, but who (or what) is WSAD?

When I left the mainframe (M/F) world 7-8 years ago, we were in the process of offloading our Cobol development from M/F to Windows workstations (i.e. PC's). Even back then, it seemed like MicroFocus had that niche pretty well mastered.

Code what you mean,
and mean what you code!
But by all means post your code!

Razalas

 

[Truusvlugindewind]

WSAD(=websphere application developer). This is the java workbench based upon eclipse. When you add the IBM (visualage?) cobol compiler to that you'll get WSED (=websphere enterprise developer). Recently IBM changed the name of that product. I'm not sure what it is called now.

And yeah, since the workbench-4 (1994?) micro focus has a good and high quality cobol environmnet capable of offloading your development (AND TEST/DEBUG) from the mainframe to your PC.

 

[razalas]

Truus..

Thanks for the explanation! Catch a star!

I thought it might be something to do with the IBM Visual Age product line, but I was couldn't remember the "Visual Age" product name and I was having a hard time decoding "WSAD".

As I said having been out of the m/f world for several years now, "Websphere" has dropped off my radar.

I kept seeing the "WS" and thinking "working storage", but I knew that couldn't be it! What would you expect from a Cobol programmer?

Code what you mean,
and mean what you code!
But by all means post your code!

Razalas

 

[pentegr]

For the price of Websphere licensing fees you may as well run your dev and testing through the bog standard TSO/ISPF on the m/f (unless of course you want to make use of all the java stuff which is what Websphere is essentially for)

Now unless you're mucking about on a toybox without the benefit of a seperate dev/test/pre-prod/prod environment(we're talking real m/f here) your m/f cost is going to be way lower than the cost of an additional 3rd party environment

 

[ceh4702]

How we would handle this is we had multiple partitions on the mainframe and had a Test Environment which had a copy of the Production data. Some things were harder to test than others. There always seemed to be some files that were in use constantly that had to be tested in Production. Typically in that case we would write the program in a way it can be tested without writing files, then you could look at the output and then if it was good, write the files. Often accounting wanted to verify the final totals were going to be what they expected so we designed code to have a trial mode and a final mode.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[Crox]

To develop COBOL applications for the mainframe, I use most of the time CA-REALIA COBOL. It is very fast and no royalty trouble when you distribute anything.

 

[dchristensen]

We're in the process of implementing MFE to offload development to the workstation. Another option to look at would be perCOBOL. During our evaluation, I looked at it and it seemed to be a good product. Its IDE is also based on Eclipse.