Re: Resistence is Futile ... You will be Translated

Cyrus Montakab — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:41:15 GMT

Very, very good point. Actually - we are working on that :)

It works like this: During the translation, the "paragraphs" (OO method) get parameterised, ie the data-classes used within the "methods" will be passed to it. The input/output of the method can therefore be isolated, and we can automatically generate a Unit test script to test these.

Putting together valid test data can also be achived semi-automatically. But I better shut-up now before giving away too much of the company IP!

Re: Resistence is Futile ... You will be Translated

Chris Jones — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:47:15 GMT

Hey, maybe some of us WANT to be translated:-)

Perhaps you do this already, but to your list of modernization steps I would add this "obvious" point that is not quite so obvious in much of the mainframe world: Generate unit test drivers for each class in the translated system.

The COBOL systems I work on, in addition to being monstrous piles of accumulated patches, lack any facility for repeatable unit tests. This is more an aspect of the corporate culture than of the development tools, though to be sure, gigantic monolithic multi-purpose programs do tend to discourage the belief that it is even possible to come up with a repeatable unit test. It is much more common to develop an entire set of unrelated upgrades with NO unit testing, and assume that the QA cycle will smoke out the bugs. That would be wonderful, except QA tends to focus on a few well-known functional tests that may not even hit the revised code. Most developers I work with would be very glad to discover that their newly-translated system came with a handy set of unit test programs and data.

Cyrus Montakab Blog - Resistence is Futile ... You will be Translated

Re: Resistence is Futile ... You will be Translated

Re: Resistence is Futile ... You will be Translated