Future of object-oriented COBOL?

[Guest_imported]

Hi everyone,

COBOL has been around for 40 years and widely used in business applications. Will COBOL 2002 ie. object-oriented COBOL be equally ubiquitous? I'm new to COBOL but just wondering what your comments are.

Thank a lot.

Mike Danning

 

[MarcLodge]

Mike,
Cobol, in one form or another will be around for ever! There are many billions of lines of Cobol code and so many people with vast amounts of experience in this language, that people still continue to invest in it as a language, and in it as a development tool. It's continued development as a language is evident in your Object orientated question, and also by the fact the people are writing Web based applications in Cobol.
I'm sure that different flavours of Cobol will wax and wane, but Cobol as a language will live on for a very long time yet.
Marc

 

[turnipman]

I thought our company would keep COBOL forever but it is going fast, SAP is replacing all our mainframe systems and should be complete by 2004. The code is not being rewritten into JAVA or C++ or anything like that, entire systems are being replaced. I've been in COBOL for 30 years now and I'm finally seeing the end, at this company anyway.

 

[BigMag]

Ever seen the mess you can create with OO? BigMag, The Netherlands.
bigmag@wanadoo.nl

 

[jkapcia]

Any paradigm can produce a mess if poor coding techniques and convoluted logic are used. Jay

 

[StephenJSpiro]

The new (2002) COBOL standard is fully Object Oriented, using the CORBA model. A Class Library is being developed and will be ready soon.
IBM's new "Enterprise COBOL" implements most of the new standard, and provides for mix-and-match COBOL and JAVA classes.
Use of the OO features is optional.
There have been OO COBOL compilers around for 6 years or more, unfortunartely based on (different) early drafts of the OO features.

Stephen J Spiro
ANSI COBOL Standards Committee

 

[BigMag]

I wish jkapcia in the future good luck with 20 year old OO stuff..... BigMag, The Netherlands.
bigmag@wanadoo.nl