FREE ESSAY ON THE FUTURE OF COBOL

THE FUTURE OF COBOL

The future of COBOL
COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) was the first widely used high-level
programming language for business applications. Many payroll, accounting, and other
business application programs written in COBOL over the past 35 years are still possible
that there are more existing lines of programming code in COBOL than in any other
programming language has been update over the years.
Today we already stepped in internet Age, most of old style business also have been
combined with intent to create the e-business, so we suppose COBOL is not useful anymore
but before we made a conclusion we'd better know how's COBOL worked, and how's COBOL will
work in future then we could make decision. COBOL was an effort to make a programming
language that was like natural English, easy to write and easier to read the coed after
you'd written it, and COBOL is one of the oldest, and arguably the most successful and
popular of all programming languages. The earliest version of the language, COBOL-60 and
-61, evolved to the COBOL-85 standard sponsored by the Conference on Data Systems
Language (CODASYL). COBOL has been declared dead so many times since April 1968 till now,
but COBOL lives on. Nevertheless, the somber pronouncements of COBOL's demise continue,
and the pace has picked up with such developments as clients-sever technology, Visual
Basic, Java, and the chaos associated with the Year-2000 problems. 
Since the year 2000 (Y2K) problem is common in many business applications and most of
these are written in COBOL, programmers with COBOL skills have become sought after by
major corporations and contractors. A number of companies have updated COBOL and sell
development tools to meet the requirements about COBOL applications using in e-business.
Since the COBOL use for Oriented of business it was mostly serviced for big company. Even
now many large companies have a huge pool of COBOL-based applications that constitute
their core business systems, even in today's e-business. (For instances, The Seagram Co.
Ltd., The Federal Express, and Canada Trust. Etc.) If COBOL declare to death the
alternative is too awful to contemplate, the number of lines of COBOL application code
ranges from 200 billion to 5 trillion. Rewriting application in Java may give purists a
feeling of euphoria, but in reality no one is doing this, or if you feel really
masochistic, you could try and rewrite them in C++. 
Every big company has to start from where it is. This is means taking old, arthritic
applications and 'wrapping' them so they become a stable starting point for future
developments. These applications also need to be integrated, and e-business means that
these systems need to be integrated and connected to the outside world. As a matter of
fact, this is the most pressing issue facing many large companies, forget about Java and
XML, many IT manger would be happy if their applications could talk to each other and
provide an interface to the outside world.
Several computer companies already developed some economical, practical product could
combine with COBOL to working in e-business. At August 14,1995 Micro Focus announced
Visual Object COBOL? version 1.0 for window? 95, in 1998 CASEGN system Ltd announces that
COBOL for windows is available free-of-charge to promote the use of COBOL as a powerful
windows95/NT graphical development tool, now IBM introduced VisualAge COBOL 2000
enterprise for OS/2 and Windows NT, and other COBOL supporters like CORBRA, MERANT, etc.
those supporter's software are enhanced following features: a working station development
environment that enables you to seamlessly develop, modify, reengineer, maintain,
modernize, and port host applications right at your desktop. 
As far as I am concerned, there is no good reason not use one of the contemporary
versions of COBOL for developing the server end of e-business applications, and in
reality many organizations will. After all, Merant is growing at around 40 percent a
year, so quite a few companies must be using its products.
As is usually the case in this industry, someone will spend years cobbling together a
Java-based e0business, applying copious amounts of tape and string, and by the skin of
their teeth get something that performs a useful business function; and we will all
marvel at it. The fact that it could have been written in COBOL in a tenth of the time
will be totally overlooked: after all, wee must celebrate how rapidly we are advancing in
this industry. We might not buy so much otherwise. So it's not surprising that they would
have a favorable. 
After I do this research the following statement is a useful advice indeed. What the
legacy argument does not address is the substantial amount of new code being written
today in small organizations - organizations that never have had, and never will have, a
mainframe. Many of these organizations will work hard to avoid writing any of the
applications that COBOL has been used for, because it's much more economical to buy a
package to do the job. But if a fledgling 10-person company with one programmer (or a
modest 100-person company with 5-10 programmers) does decide to write an application
system today for its PC-based. Internet-aware environment, my guess is that the odds of
COBOL being used are about one in a thousand. So if you are a large company and you want
to move forward from where you are without taking huge risks, COBOL is worth at least a
look.