Coss Solutions

Microsoft .NET for COBOL programmers

Business critical software, which has been around ever since the late 1950’s is still operative within many organizations. During the lifetime of these applications the functionality has been extended over and over again, parts were replaced with new modules, and GUI’s were created using middleware to give the application a modern look-and-feel.

Many of these applications have one thing in common. They are developed in COBOL…Billions of lines COBOL code rule the financial, administrative and logistical application world. Banks and brokers, travel agencies and airports, insurance and government, 80% of their business critical applications are developed in COBOL.

While new programming languages were introduced, and often subsequently disappeared, COBOL has always played a prominent role in software development. Even today, millions lines of COBOL are written or generated every day.

COBOL to other languages

There has been a tendency of transforming COBOL to other programming languages such as Java or C#. The thought behind these transformations was to move the applications to a more cost-effective environment such as Microsoft Server and connecting the application to a modern database. Next introducing a Service Oriented Architecture for which the .Net environment offers all tools necessary.

However, when studying applications renewed this way, we concluded that maintenance costs rose due to the complexity introduced by the transformation. Also performance and stability was often an issue.

And how about programming staff ? The modern .Net environment is known for its long learning curve. According to a report from Gartner (2005) a COBOL developer needs at least a year to become a proficient developer in .Net. And there are even (very good) COBOL programmers that are just not capable of thinking OO.

The best of two worlds 

The ADF joins the best of two worlds. It provides an Object Oriented development environment using C# and the .Net classes. Next it provides COBOL templates for all sorts of programs

The entire GUI engine of the ADF is pre-programmed in an event driven model. It uses state-of-the-art technology while providing a simplified gateway to the .Net components.

A programmer that uses ADF does not worry about technology but concentrates purely on business logic.

For your convenience we have made a trial copy available of our Application Development Framework for Microsoft .NET. You can use the trial for an unlimited timespan but exclusive features are not enabled. Simply download the package and get the hands-on experience.

In order to download please register, log in using the form at the left and find the ADF download in the menu on the top left of this page.