Sure sounds like a contradiction in terms, doesn't it?
My company has a 10-year goal to replace the COBOL mainframe processing with batch Java. So naturally, it follows that I need to figure out how to do this.
Let's see - I have Eclipse Luna, Git Hub, Git Shell and SQL Exec installed on my PC. (and no idea what to do with them)
Our mainframe environment is IBM z/OS with DB2. But I don't know what to do next. Yeah, like everyone else, I've built a few little online Java online apps, but nothing as advanced as a master file database CRUD application.
I've listened to the webinar Batch Java Overview from Themis Education (useless), and I've even signed up for a "class to be offered later this year." In the meantime, I know I need to RTFM, but where's a legitimate manual?
Joined: 06 Jun 2008 Posts: 8696 Location: Dubuque, Iowa, USA
Have you checked the Redbooks web site for Java -- I searched for Java and got 250 books back (which is probably the limit returned, not the actual number of books)?
Your post is pretty vague about what you need help with -- running batch Java jobs? what would be involved in converting COBOL to Java? migrating mainframe applications to another platform?
If you haven't already done so, you need to do an application survey and find out how many COBOL programs there are, how many lines or code, how many programs are batch / CICS and how many of each use DB2, and so forth. You also need to determine what platform / software will be used to replace the mainframe processing ("batch Java" doesn't tell much about what the Java will be executing on) -- just for data base, you could use DB2 for Windows / Linux, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, among others. These steps allow you to start scoping out the project.
Many such migration projects wind up floundering because it is not easy to move from one language to another, nor one platform to another, and converting the business logic is usually a lot harder than managers initially realize. Not to mention that the resources the company puts into your 10-year conversion project will not be available to update / upgrade existing systems hence the company will likely fall behind competitors who are not converting.
I am very concerned about the performance impact that a wholesale conversion from a compiled language to an interpreted on like Java would be on our system.
About 20 years ago (my goodness - am I really that old?) I consulted with a company who decided that their programming language was going to be Easytrieve Plus. They brought us in because they couldn't understand why their nightly batch process was taking a week to run.
I quickly identified one job that updated a master file from 4 VSAMs and a flat file. In Easytrieve, it took 23 hours. In COBOL, 1 minute.
Just because the technology is new and sexy doesn't mean that it is appropriate for global use!
My company has a 10-year goal to replace the COBOL mainframe processing with batch Java. So naturally, it follows that I need to figure out how to do this.
Let's see - I have Eclipse Luna, Git Hub, Git Shell and SQL Exec installed on my PC. (and no idea what to do with them)
it is odd that for such a challenging task You had to resort to ask on a forum ...
wiser to ask Your organization to plan some formal training
anyway
Eclipse luna ( from the eclipse web site )
Quote:
Luna is a past version of Eclipse. Please visit our download page for the latest version of Eclipse.
GIT is a distributed SCM tool
GITHUB and GIT shell are PC tools used to interface with a CENTRALISED git repository
Joined: 06 Jun 2008 Posts: 8696 Location: Dubuque, Iowa, USA
Performance will probably be an issue. I've ported applications from z/OS to a Windows platform running CYGWIN, and probably one of the bigger issues was sorting -- JCL sorts are nice and easy; Windows sorting is not as easy and replicating the sort logic can be difficult (not to mention the size of the data set ported to Windows needs to be small enough to sort). It can be done, since I did it, but what was running 4 jobs through the scheduler on z/OS became a 2-day process of running scripts, checking results, running more scripts, ....