running COBOL / CICS on a PC

[Crox]

Hi,

which COBOL / CICS maiframe-source-compatible systems are there and what are your positive and negative experiences?

Are they expensive?

For example: I know that CA-REALIA can handle CICS but I don't have any experience with CICS so I don't know how much trouble it is to downsize a mainframe CICS system to the PC. Do you?

Regards,

Crox

 

[gregsimpson]

Crox,

not surprisingly Microfocus can handle it, with their usual expertise. The main difference I found were the PC environemnt was a little more forgiving on run time errors than the mainframe. However now they have split into the different express products I believe the mainframe express to be a very close match to the mainframe. I was only using it for development and then proting to the Mainframe, the opposite of what your wanting to do here.

Cheers
Greg

 

[Crox]

Hi Greg,

Thanks for your answer. In your development environment, did you work with several users at the same time simulation (a little bit) the wild transaction situation on the mainframe? Do the commit-, rollback-, unexpected-powerdown situations work as on the mainframe?

Thanks in advance!

Regards,

Crox

 

[gregsimpson]

Crox,

I must admit, we weren't multi-user in our development enviroment. However I would say from an application point of view there was virtually no change in Commits Rollbacks etc. My particular project did a very quirky thing with Entry points in a peice of common code which Microfocus under CICS couldn't cope with. We handled this by having a different version of the common module on the mainframe to the PC. The other thing we had 2 versions of the code for was anything to do with pointer arithmetic.

Things like VSAM files etc had to be defined in a different way to how you would on the Mainframe. Development of the batch side was a little more tricky due to JCL etc.

I understand now that the MAinframe Express product is as compatible as you could possibly expect in terms of CICS etc and also interprets jcl etc as regards Batch work. Whether it still has the quirks I've mentioned I don't know.

Cheers
Greg

 

[ctowns]

If you are interested in moving CICS (Transactions, BMS, etc) to run in the Application Server environment the LegacyJ Transaction Platform along with LegacyJ PERCobol may be the answer.

The transaction tools will compile the COBOL, convert the screens and generate a deployable entity that will run on any J2EE Application Server (Websphere, WebLogic, JBoss, SunONE, Trifork,etc.) The CICS transaction can be deployed with this solution on Linux, Windows, Solaris, AIX, HP UX or even back on the mainframe.

VSAM should target SQL data store.

Charles Townsend
LegacyJ