Veryant has introduced a new release of vCOBOL Enterprise, which provides an environment for developing and deploying business-critical COBOL applications across Linux, UNIX, and Microsoft Windows systems
The main focus of vCOBOL Enterprise 2011 Release 3 is around enabling organizations with large amounts of data, such as the Singapore Exchange, Asia's second largest listed exchange, to make the transition off the mainframe and on to open systems, Wendy Williams, marketing director for Veryant, tells 5 Minute Briefing. According to Veryant, the Singapore Exchange (SGX), which chose vCOBOL Enterprise software as part of a $3 million modernization project, will use the solution to preserve migrated mainframe COBOL code for key applications such as clearing and settlement.
With more than 200 billion lines of COBOL code still in existence and a shelf life that often ranges from 10 to 30 years, COBOL applications can access terabytes of data in today's modern businesses, says Veryant.
With the new release of vCOBOL Enterprise, organizations like SGX that migrate COBOL applications and relational databases from the mainframe to open systems can now take advantage of a new application migration utility to simplify the transition. Relational databases require additional Embedded Structured Query Language (ESQL) syntax that is not required on the mainframe. The new release of vCOBOL prepares mainframe COBOL source code for open systems by automatically addressing these COBOL/ESQL differences.
New Support for SQLJ Convention
And, post-migration, vCOBOL now offers companies the choice of accessing relational databases, such as IBM DB2 or Oracle, through JDBC or through the SQLJ convention. SQLJ calls are typically easier to write, and more concise than JDBC calls, and because SQLJ leverages static queries and a precompiler, SQLJ calls often run faster than JDBC, Veryant says. On internal tests, Veryant experienced greater than 50% faster performance when reading records with SQLJ.
"We have seen SQLJ come up a lot in shops that are heavy Java application users because it really makes the integration between relational databases and Java applications simpler," says Williams. vCOBOL supports relational databases such as DB2, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Informix and Sybase - any RDBMS that has a JDBC or SQLJ driver - however, only DB2, Oracle and Informix support the SQLJ convention, Williams points out.
Other enhancements in vCOBOL Enterprise 2011 Release 3 include:
- Enhanced developer productivity from improvements to the vCOBOL Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and vCOBOL Debugger
- Added compatibility with mainframe COBOL, such as support for numeric moves, numeric comparisons, and the "SYSTEM" library routine, to further simplify transitions to the vCOBOL platform
- Greater diagnostics and debugging from improvements to the trace log
For more information, visit http://www.veryant.com.