KEEPS THEWORLD RUNNING EVERYDAY ONBILLIONS OF LINES OFLEGACY CODE
LEGACYCOBOL* SOFTWARE EXPERTISE
ABOUT
A Global Career of + Years in System Design, Development, Maintenance, Documentation, and Project Management
Working with world-class organizations
from the Inter-American Development Bank, Sony, Corel, Oberoi Group, Toyota Motorsport, and Singapore Airlines — to the
Prime Minister's Office in the Bahamas, Kuwait Municipality, Stanford Research Institute, Kowloon-Canton Railway, and Indonesia Strategic Industries … has provided an exceptional opportunity to build and enrich a wide range of technical and
management skills.
The combined assets of eclectic expertise and global experience are now focused on the challenge of maintaining and re-generating COBOL-based legacy systems — with particular focus on systems that have the potential to be further empowered by the transformative work now being done to integrate AI technologies directly within the COBOL language. (see NexGen*Cobol )
When implementing a synergistic strategy to maintain a legacy system, consistency + familiarity are crucial. Utilizing the long-term commitment of a qualified expert, as a seamless yet remote extension of your in-house team, can be a great approach to acquiring and retaining a proven asset ... as-and-when you need it. Throughout the many years of providing legacy system support, this philosophy has been applied successfully — regardless of whether the system is administered in New York, Tokyo, London, Singapore, Zurich or Hong Kong.
Daniel Turner
Legacy System Specialist NexGen* Creator/Programmer Stratus Project Architect Doctor Cobol Author
LEGACY SUPPORT
MAINTENANCE
support includes
everything
from fixing minor errors
in the code to rewriting complete sections of the application software,
especially
when it helps an existing system to interface with web interfaces, mobile apps, new external
devices, and enhanced libraries.
INTEGRATION
links legacy COBOL systems
with new apps, which
connect a legacy environment with breaking technologies based, for
example, on the
most recent implementations of Cloud and mobile computing, IoT, big data and
critical security protocols.
EXTENSION
of functional capability in a
legacy COBOL system
allows for the internal enhancement of the system's original mission,
while still
working with many of the same technologies, interfaces, data structures and
languages upon which the original system was based.
CONVERSION
support for a
legacy system provides the critical expertise needed to comprehensively plan and
prepare for the re-generation of a complete
system, including (when required)
the documentation of new system design specifications, growth strategies, and data
migration guidelines.
TESTING
spans the full range of system
validation activities —
from unit tests to integration and functional test. Unit tests are very low level,
close to the application source. Integration tests verify that different modules
work well together. And lastly, functional tests focus on validating the overall
commercial requirements of an application.
DOCUMENTATION
is often one of the greatest
weaknesses of a
legacy system, especially when maintenance has been carried out over a long period,
by multiple programmers and, at times, by different organizations. Bringing back some
continuity + integrity to documentation can make future revisions less
costly and
more timely.
SYSTEMS EXPERTISE
The development of expertise in programming COBOL professionally began more than
years ago
with COBOL 74. Since then experience has been solidified in all subsequent versions of the language, with
particular focus on IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS, and more recently on partial compiler implementations of COBOL 2023.
Visual Studio Code is currently the primary
development environment with a highly-customized configuration for coding COBOL, JCL,
JSON, XML and various other scripting and high-level programming languages. VSCode extensions
are also used for Git version control and GitHub repositories.
Database experience, in relation to COBOL-driven systems, is founded on a broad knowledge of
both IBM and Oracle databases. Skills related to Web Services are further
supported by a strong foundation in both back-end development and front-end Web design (see danielturner.design), particularly as it
relates to mobile platforms.
A long-term interest in designing programming languages and compiler architectures, as
well as in the implementation of complex mathematical-modelling and fuzzy logic-based expert systems, has led to the
recent design and
ongoing development of the NexGen*Cobol language — and the FOREX investment Nex*Stratus application.
NEXGEN*COBOL
AI-Enabled Solution Designed To Empower Today's Large-Scale Financial Systems
When a language has been as successful, as well-suited to its purpose, and as pervasive as
COBOL, modernizing it seems almost sacrilegious, but information technology has
made staggering advances since the late 50’s when COBOL was first conceived to
support the needs of mainframe-based Enterprise Computing – especially in the field of
large-scale financial systems.
And although the many advances in the language implemented within COBOL 1985,
2002, 2014, and 2023 have gone a long way to upgrading COBOL for today's demanding applications,
there’s still room to make the language cleaner, leaner (see comparative code
examples), and more suited to the current skills and demands of programmers, especially
when it comes to integrating the power of expert system techniques with COBOL’s inherent
strength in business system platforms.
Completely rebuilding existing large-scale
legacy systems is prohibitive. These systems are, more often than not, built
upon millions and millions of lines of COBOL code. The solution to modernizing legacy systems is
certainly not wholesale replacement, nor is it stagnation – the solution must rest in the choice
to make a paradigm-shift in financial data processing, with advanced
rules-based decision-making capability, without losing the roots that are firmly planted in the
foundational concepts of the COBOL language – if not its primordial syntax.
The NexGen* Framework (as conceptually diagrammed above) provides an integrated
solution for maintaining, expanding, and enhancing both existing and new systems through the use
of its bidirectional expert system-driven COBOL—NexGen* translator, its NexGen* compiler and
dual VSCode IDE extensions, which will support both future developers and the guardians of
today’s critically-important legacy systems.
NexGen*Cobol is not just a tweak on the current COBOL language, it is a quantum
leap that allows system architects and programmers to enhance and re-engineer code ‘Divisions’
without compromising or fully replacing the basic premises of mainframe software that have done
the job for decades – only this time with the benefits of AI-empowered constructs that
are accessible directly within the language.
STRATUS PROJECT
Mainframe-based Strategy Development Application For Global Currency Investment On NexGen*Cobol Systems
The project goal is to create an integrated four-part software application (code-named:
Nex*Stratus) using the NexGen*Cobol language (see NexGen*Cobol Codebase in the diagram below). The application is
used to build and manage a large-scale IBM Db2 database that contains historic
currency exchange information for 65+ countries — as sourced mainly from the OECD: Organization
for Economic Co-operation and Development.
By accessing the project database and entering current exchange rates, Nex*Stratus
users will be able to perform interactive currency market analysis to predict
future trends (see graphic user interface). Users will also be able to develop FOREX currency investment strategies using
real-time
statistical analysis and fuzzy logic-based mathematical modelling, which are
supported by dynamic rules-based expert system technology. This multilingual application, coded
entirely in
NexGen*Cobol (except for the GUI), will ultimately be converted to accept multiple foreign currency data sources — not only data from the OECD.
All four parts of the Nex*Stratus application (see NexGen*Cobol CodeBase in the concept diagram above) are supported by a single front-end graphic interface for 1) currency database management, 2) user data entry, validation and retrieval, 3) currency trend evaluation, and 4) investment strategy development. The initial version of the application has been developed with the intent of providing future releases in multiple languages — including Japanese, Chinese, French and German.
Although initially developed and tested in a “closed” environment, the
Nex*Stratus system is designed and ultimately intended for high-performance
(massive-data) processing on IBM z/OS mainframes (or similar hardware configurations). In the
future, it is anticipated that the Nex*Stratus
Db2 database will be significantly enhanced by an interface with a user-controlled and securely-filtered neural network,
which will further support AI-empowered FOREX Investment Strategy Development.
NEXGEN* IN A DAY
Learn To Program NexGen* In Only One Day — Is It Really Possible?
Yes and No ... If you can already program in another language like Python, Javascript, C#, Rust or Go, then this condensed Micro-Course will
give you a solid understanding of what the NexGen*Cobol language is all about. The course is divided into 20 sections and each one can easily be covered
within 20–30 minutes, which means that the full course can indeed be completed in a single day.
Of course, to really master any language, including NexGen*, it takes a sustained effort and many more hours to understand the inherent variations,
idiosyncrasies and weaknesses of the language — in order to correctly apply its strengths. Having said that, learning the material in NexGen*
In-A-Day will go a long way to providing a solid foundation for future coding projects.
Each page (linked in the Course Sections menu above) summarizes one key point at a time — with related diagrams containing examples of code syntax and
structure. Pages are ordered in a logical pattern, which helps make the process of condensed learning as straight forward and succinct as
possible. The final section outlines an approach to coding NexGen*Cobol as an art as well as a science — which should help new NexGen*
programmers write code that is clean, coherent, well-structured and easily maintained.
DOCTOR COBOL ON X
Want To Follow Doctor Cobol On Your Phone? It’s
Quick & Easy!
For those that already have a Twitter-X account, just click
on the
“Follow” link at the top of the sample post (to the right), or if
you are on your phone, tap on the "Follow" link in the sample post below.
If you are new to
Twitter-X, here’s a summary of simple steps that will get you up and
running quickly:
Step 1. If you want to follow "Doctor Cobol" on your phone, download the
Twitter app (from the App Store), or if you prefer to see posts on your
computer, go to www.twitter.com
in your browser.
Step 2. Twitter-X will then guide you through the process of creating an account.
Only basic information is required, like your name and e-mail address. You will
also need to select a username and password for the new account.
Step 3. You should now be able to follow any Twitter-X account, including @DoctorCobol,
and
receive posts as regular notifications on your phone.
If you have successfully
created your
new Twitter-X account you can now join @DoctorCobol
– Enjoy!
Doctor Cobol brings you weekly doses of COBOL wisdom, legacy
culture, coding tips, language history, programming
opportunities, and related industry trends (e.g. NexGen*Cobol).
A quick read of the sample post below will give you a sense of just
how important COBOL is to the modern world of finance and institutional management.
Born in another era, COBOL
lives on in over 800 billion
lines of code—including code that powers
80% of in-person financial transactions. It’s the foundation of critically important
legacy systems that have run successfully for decades in many major organizations
around the world.
Born in another era, COBOL
lives on in over 800 billion
lines of code—including code that powers
80% of in-person financial transactions. It’s the foundation of critically important
legacy systems that have run successfully for decades in many major organizations
around the world.
What is not emphasized often enough is that there is an increasing gap between the large financial organizations, which rely heavily on COBOL, and the importance of the language among programmers today. This is a topic often covered by Doctor Cobol.
Visit the Doctor Cobol Twitter-X Archives
to see the complete collection of published
tweets/posts.
Daniel Turner
MAINTENANCE
support includes
everything
from fixing minor errors
in the code to rewriting complete sections of the application software,
especially
when it helps an existing system to interface with web interfaces, mobile apps, new external
devices, and enhanced libraries.
INTEGRATION
links legacy COBOL systems
with new apps, which
connect a legacy environment with breaking technologies based, for
example, on the
most recent implementations of Cloud and mobile computing, IoT, big data and
critical security protocols.
EXTENSION
of functional capability in a
legacy COBOL system
allows for the internal enhancement of the system's original mission,
while still
working with many of the same technologies, interfaces, data structures and
languages upon which the original system was based.
CONVERSION
support for a
legacy system provides the critical expertise needed to comprehensively plan and
prepare for the re-generation of a complete
system, including (when required)
the documentation of new system design specifications, growth strategies, and data
migration guidelines.
TESTING
spans the full range of system
validation activities —
from unit tests to integration and functional test. Unit tests are very low level,
close to the application source. Integration tests verify that different modules
work well together. And lastly, functional tests focus on validating the overall
commercial requirements of an application.
DOCUMENTATION
is often one of the greatest
weaknesses of a
legacy system, especially when maintenance has been carried out over a long period,
by multiple programmers and, at times, by different organizations. Bringing back some
continuity + integrity to documentation can make future revisions less
costly and
more timely.
1. Introduction
2. Program Structure
3. Code Formatting
4. Data Declaration
5. Symbol Extension
6. Control Structures
7. Code Integration
8. Sequential Files
9. Relative Files
10. Indexed Files
11. Tabular Data
12. Sort and Merge
13. String Handling
14. Intrinsic Functions
15. Frame Constructs
16. Flow Constructs
17. Database Integration
18. Object-Oriented Code
19. Advanced Topics
20. The Art Of ...
