Our users require improved reports, self service queries and improved data integration
Typical Scenarios
The existing COBOL application is processing data very efficiently but there are increasing customer’s demands for easier access like:-
- The standard reports we currently provide are not meeting business requirements. We need much more contemporary reports on the data held within COBOL systems
- Certain users need the ability to do ad-hoc reports themselves rather than waiting for the standard reports IT currently provide from the COBOL systems
- Management need information that requires integration of the data held in COBOL systems with data held in non-COBOL systems
Servicing requirements via re-use
If the data that the current COBOL systems process is held within a popular relational database like Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle or IBM DB/2 UDB then all of these requirements can be satisfied fairly easily. The standard facilities provided by the database vendors or supplementary 3rd party reporting or data integration technologies that work with these databases.
There is no need to modify the COBOL business rules or the EXEC SQL access code unless the underlying data model needs updated and this is a standard development task for most development teams.
Some programmers are not as strong with SQL as they are with COBOL, so Micro Focus provides tools to enable queries to be painted visually ad tested visually before SQL code is generated for inclusion in the COBOL programs aid productivity and increase quality.
However for many COBOL systems, some or all of the data they process is held in what are referred to as "flat files". These are file formats with fairly flat (or simple) data structures compared to relational databases. The benefit using these simpler data structures is performance. Data can be written and read from these files much faster than relational databases, however, as there is no relational model, modelling the data in a relational way is not straightforward.
Many COBOL systems use flat files for data where fast access it’s crucial for overall application performance but relational databases for other data. So like most things in IT it’s a compromise between performance and flexibility.
But if flexibility in reporting or integrating the "flat file" data is vital then there are several options that can be used to help address all the typical scenarios discussed above while maximizing the re-use of the working COBOL system
- ODBC/JDBC drivers are available for Micro Focus flat files which enable popular SQL access and reporting tools to be used with flat files. This mechanism helps present a relational view of the flat file data without compromising on the data access performance and requires no changes to the COBOL applications
- RDBMS mapping technology is available for Micro Focus COBOL which enables the COBOL file access code to remain intact but the data is actually migrated to a relational database. This obviously means the data is now held in a relational model so data access will not be as fast but all the requirements above can be met while making no changes to the COBOL applications
- Micro Focus and our partners can help move to a native RDBMS solution i.e. the flat file data is migrated to a relational database and the COBOL file access code is replaced with SQL code. Data access is not as fast but all of the requirements above can be met while minimizing the changes to the COBOL application data access modules.
