Most firms are viewing migration from COBOL to Java, but this requires skilled developers

The Common Business Oriented Language, abbreviated as COBOL, is among the oldest languages used in programming. Created in the late 1950s, most organizations' legacy systems are in fact based on COBOL programming. Due to this fact, most companies find it hard to update their COBOL systems to reflect regulatory requirements and business needs changes. The main problem with the COBOL legacy systems is that it is an expensive platform to maintain, especially since the number of programmers familiar with COBOL keeps decreasing each year. Furthermore, maintaining large COBOL systems prevents companies from being able to standardize their technology, as modern software is not compatible with these older platforms. Since rewriting the source code by hand is very expensive, most firms are viewing migration from COBOL to Java as a more viable option. But it is a tough job.

Here's Where the Conversion Problem Lies

Even if a company has experienced developers on board, COBOL and Java's incompatible environment and translation hurdles make for challenging translations, said Nick Twyman, senior director of application engineering at Truss, a software development company.

For example, when developers do a like-for-like translation between COBOL data types and types in Java, they run into semantic differences in how they behave in edge cases such as integer overflow, he said. Overflow happens when developers try to store values that are outside the range of the variable's allowed value.

Another problem developers encounter is a lack of full documentation of an application's functionality, said David Garthe, president of online marketing firm Gravyware. An application might be old and previously modified by many developers, with orphaned functionality causing code bloat.

What are the Benefits?

The benefits of moving from COBOL to Java are numerous and contribute directly to the increased efficiency of the organizations that take the plunge. COBOL to Java automation-assisted modernization not only drastically reduces the company's annual cost of maintaining the system, but also makes it easier to hire software engineers to work on the system after a COBOL to Java conversion. The development of new applications is also simplified, as adopting the Java standard enables the use of open-source frameworks. COBOL to Java also allows easy integration of other packaged software, which provides options to improve current business processes. Access to these third-party products would have been impossible while relying only on legacy software.