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A pilot project for migrating COBOL code to web services

  • Special Section on Web Systems Evolution
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International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper describes a pilot project conducted to test the feasibility of constructing web services from existing mainframe COBOL programs. The project involved the use of four tools. The first tool, COBAudit, was intended to identify candidates for web services. The second tool, COBStrip, served to extract only that portion of the code required to fulfill the service. The third tool, COBWrap, wrapped the code extracted from original code and converted it to an executable component. The fourth tool, COBLink, connected the wrapped component to the web by generating a WSDL interface from either the COBOL linkage section or the original map definition. The tools were applied to a legacy life insurance system with more than 20 million lines of COBOL code running under IMS on the IBM mainframe.

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  1. ANECON GmbH, University of Regensburg, Vienna, Austria

    Harry M. Sneed

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  1. Harry M. Sneed
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Correspondence to Harry M. Sneed.

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Sneed, H.M. A pilot project for migrating COBOL code to web services. Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer 11, 441–451 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-009-0128-z

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