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HP COBOL Migration Challenges
HP's dialect of COBOL sticks fairly closely to COBOL 74/85 Standards.
The main differences is the VPLUS Screens definitions, TurboImage database Access, and extentions to COBOL langauge.
The biggest differences in HP COBOL applications is the use of VPLUS Screens and Turbo-Image database layer and API.
SoftwareMining Translation Toolkit already supports the most widely elements of these libraries.
(SoftwareMining services will endevour to provide support for the missing libraries when undertaking translation Services).
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VPLUS Screens
VPLUS is a Form designer used to generate HP character screens
The forms are compiled, and used by the COBOL applications thru HP - VPLUS API.
The VPLUS API allows definitions of scripts for client side validation of the screens. This is similar to use of JavaScript within HTML pages.
The screen information is validated on the client - prior to sending to the server.
SoftwareMining CORECT translates VPLUS screens to JSP+Java Script, or ASP+VBScript.
VPLUS screen definitions are converted to
XML representation. Form specifications created by FORMSPEC program used as a source of the transformation.
The VPLUS Scripts require manual translation into JavaScript. (The presence of the VPLUS Scripts fits well into the new
architecture - the conversion to Java scripts for validation helps improve the client-side performance and reduces the load on the server).
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HP TurboImage Database and API
HP uses Turbo-Image API's as a form of Database maintenance.
TurboImage is a hierarchical database - consisting of only 2 levels : master and detail.
This is used effectively to maintain record information such as ORDER-HEADER, and ORDER-LINE.
The Turbo Image API is different to standard relational databases in several aspects:
- TurboImage is Positional: After closing the a program - the cursor position will not be lost. Next time the program is restarted - the system may start from the previous position
- TurboImage does not support any kind of querying language (such as SQL). All interchange between TurboImage and program implemented through language-specfic API.
SoftwareMining CORECT Translates TURBOIMAGE library calls to a Java Persistence Framework - utilising SQL databases
TurboImage scripts can be easily re-engineered into Relational-Database. The 2 layer nature of them means that they entity relationships can be easily re-introduced. The structure also does not introduce deep rooted relationships, and avoids unnecessary complexity.
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Extentions to COBOL Language
Some extentons to standard ANSI COBOL statements have been defined.
SoftwareMining CORECT Translates TURBOIMAGE library calls to a Java Persistence Framework - utilising SQL databases
TurboImage scripts can be easily re-engineered into Relational-Database. The 2 layer nature of them means that they entity relationships can be easily re-introduced. The structure also does not introduce deep rooted relationships, and avoids unnecessary complexity.
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Translation Process and Deliverables
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The translation of to Java or C# applications involve
- MANUAL Data Analysis: REDFINES, DATES, Migration Policy
- AUTOMATIC: Remove dead code.
- AUTOMATIC: Translation to target language
- SOFTWAREMINING and/or CLIENT: Optional: Business Rule Extraction.
- SOFTWAERMINING: Provision of Screen, Database and Transaction handling Framework in Java or C#
- SOFTWAREMINING and/or CLIENT: Creation and Population of Test Database
- SOFTWAREMINING and/or CLIENT: System acceptance testing
- SOFTWAREMINING and/or CLIENT: User Acceptance Testing
- SOFTWAREMINING and/or CLIENT: DataBase Migration .
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