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From: bill <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Bootcamp
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2025 13:26:27 -0400
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In-Reply-To: <104tu3c$26cld$1@dont-email.me>

On 7/12/2025 11:13 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 7/12/2025 11:02 AM, bill wrote:
>> On 7/12/2025 10:41 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 7/12/2025 9:35 AM, bill wrote:
>>>> On 7/11/2025 8:16 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>                                                                If
>>> you have a Cobol system using ISAM files, then do not want to convert
>>> it to a Java/C++/Go/C# system using ISAM files.
>>
>> If you have a COBOL program using ISAM today it should have been
>> converted to DBMS years ago.  That does not imply that it should be
>> converted to JAVA/C++/Go/C#.
> 
> No.
> 
> But it implies that *if* you are rewriting it then it should also
> be converted from ISAM to RDBMS.
> 
> Not 1:1 conversion.
> 
>>>>> from vertical app scaling to horizontal app scaling, 
>>>>
>>>> Not really sure what this means.  :-)
>>>
>>> You can call it cluster support.
>>>
>>> If you run out of CPU power, then instead of upgrading from a
>>> big expensive box to a very big very expensive box then you just
>>> add a cluster node more.
>>
>> OK.  But I don't see what that has to do with it being written in COBOL.
>> Or are you saying that IBM Systems don't scale?
> 
> Applications are not clusterable by magic - they need to be designed
> for it.
> 
> So again if you are converting a non clusterable then it may be
> a good opportunity to convert it to clusterable instead of 1:1
> conversion.
> 
> It is possible to buy pretty powerful systems. But N small systems
> with power 1 are cheaper than 1 huge system with power N. That was
> the case 40 years ago for VAX. It is the case today.
> 
>>>>>                                                       from 5x16 to
>>>>> 7x24 operations etc..
>>>>
>>>> Certainly don't get this.  Every place I ever saw COBOL was 24/7 and
>>>> that is going back to at least 1972.
>>>
>>> I would be surprised if you have never experienced a financial
>>> institution operating with a "transaction will be completed
>>> next day" model.
>>
>> I get that now.  That has nothing to do with IT and everything to do
>> with people and their being more "legacy" than the IS.  I am finally
>> starting to see change. My last automatic payment from DFAS wasn't
>> really due until a Monday, but the funds showed up on a Saturday.
>> Even things that once ran only nightly as "batch" are now processed
>> almost immediately.  But the people still only work 8 hours a day 5
>> days a week and it is them that cause the apparent lag in most IT
>> processing.  Used to be systems went offline for 6-8 hours for backups.
>> Today if they go offline at all it is for seconds to minutes.  But, none
>> of this was ever related to the language an IS was written in and
>> rewriting it in JAVA/C++/Go/C# is not going to improve anything.
> 
> Again. It impacts the design. If the system is designed to only
> do certain things at a certain time, then the logic in the system
> must be re-designed to do everything as quickly as possible.
> 
> So again again if you rewrite an application, then you want
> to change that logic instead of doing the 1:1 conversion.
> 

And this, of course, is where we disagree.  You see rewrites as
normal and the best way to go.  I see them as usually a waste of
time being called on for the wrong reasons.  Because your peers
at a conference laugh at your legacy system is no reason to rewrite
it.  (And, yes, I have seen senior management want to make major
and often ridiculous changes based on something their peers said
over lunch at a conference!!)