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JCM
News, April 2000
Hello,
Because of the interest you expressed in J&C Migrations, we
would like to update you on our translators, migration services,
and COBOL maintenance services. However, if you prefer not receive
future News bulletins, please reply to this message, changing the
Subject line to "unsubscribe JCM News".
In
this issue:
1. Company updates
2. Article: COBOL and Business Rule Documentation
3. Term: Functional Equivalence
Company
updates
A) We specialize in creating readable and highly portable
American National Standard COBOL program sources that when compiled,
linked, and executed, work the same way as the original non COBOL
sources. We currently offer the following translation services:
- RPGII and
RPGIII program sources to COBOL.
- S/36 Screen
Definitions (S&D) to X/Open COBOL on Windows and Unix.
- S/36 Screen
Definitions (S&D) to BMS screen maps on Mainframes.
- RPG/400
program sources to COBOL/400.
- CPG program
sources to COBOL/CICS and BMS screen maps.
- RPG/400 program
sources to COBOL with PC screens and ODBC data access.
Each
of these service offerings is provided by means of a cross-compiler
tool, technical support, and a solid engineering process.
Here
is a recap of recent enhancements of our flagship JCMRPG™ translator
of RPGII to standard COBOL:
05/1997 - v3.0 added support of CA-Realia COBOL, & improved
I-O buffers.
10/1997 - v3.3 added support of ACU COBOL and NeoMedia WISP.
02/1998 - v3.4 added support of Honeywell DPS, and enhanced documentation.
05/1998 - v3.5 added support of S/390 COBOL and DLI operations.
10/1998 - v3.6 added support of Internal SORT specifications.
11/1998 - v3.7 to compile a single program with 12,000 lines.
02/1999 - v3.8 optimizations and improved readability.
B) We
also provide consulting services to:
- Port applications
onto Unix and other open systems, and to integrate them with Database
products such as DB2 and Oracle.
- Prepare
acceptance criteria (e.g. performance measurements, key stroke
differentials, and error rates) and test plans for converted applications.
- COBOL and
Unix training for programmers and end-users.
- Application
maintenance and optimization.
C) We
recently moved to larger offices. Our new location and contact information
is:
J & C Migrations
566 Centre Street
Newton, MA 02458
USA
Tel: +1 (617) 916-5114
E-mail: Click here for confidential form
at http://www.jcmigrations.com
COBOL
and Business Rule Documentation
Legacy software contains valuable Business Rules, and your organization
might be one of many that automated much of their unique expertise
and valuable business processes, but did not retain all their business
experts or documentation of all the knowledge captured in their
code.
New
needs, such as enabling e-business or a merger, may require a company
to maintain or port business applications, identify their value
to the organization's function, or recover missing documentation.
Where these situations occur, you may wish you could just read your
program sources. Translating RPG programs to readable structured
COBOL will provide readable sources, as well as enable you to use
some very exciting new technologies.
Tools
are available to automate business rule extraction, recover documentation
from spaghetti code, and transform components such as data access
and the user interface.
All
these tools analyze the source code using compiler syntax analyzers
(parsers), but instead of generating executables, they create databases.
This representation of the sources enables queries to be formulated,
and the data can be turned into the desired information, as well
as manipulated and transformed.
The
benefits of such services include: reduced risk because automated
processes are more reliable and repeatable, significantly improved
time to market, the ability to better enforce coding shop standards,
and reduced costs.
Additional
features typically include rapid development SDKs, project tracking
and management facilities, and Report generators. These tools are
often packaged with services.
Functional
Equivalence
Some of our customers have asked us to explain the term Functional
Equivalence. We use this term to combine identical program behavior
with plug-compatibility.
Identical
program behavior means, for example, that if your RPG report, whether
paper or screen, had 3 blank lines between the primary heading line
and the columns' heading line, that will also be the number of blank
lines between these exact two header lines, when the same report
is generated using the COBOL program. It also means that given the
same test data, all the calculated values on this report are identical,
and other output and updates are identical.
Plug-compatibility
for a program, means you can replace the executable generated from
the RPG source with the executable generated from the COBOL translation,
and the procedure that runs this program will perform as before,
without any modifications.
Functional
Equivalence is always our goal. If, for example, the RPG program
has a file name such as INPUT, USAGE, or ADD, which are words that
are reserved by COBOL, then the translated program and the job stream
procedure(s) using it, have to be modified to assign the physical
file information for the logical file via a new file handle. An
example of a file handle is the DD-name in JCL -- it corresponds
to the value of the SELECT ASSIGN clause. Our translators issue
warnings to alert us that the generated COBOL is not plug-compatible,
so we can easily address the issue immediately. This is why all
of our translations come with a minimum of two weeks of unlimited
support.
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J & C Migrations:
566 Centre Street
Newton, MA 02458-2325
USA
Click here to e-mail
Cryptic RPG to concise clear COBOL
http://www.jcmigrations.com
Tel. +1 (617) 916-5114
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