Conference turris::languages

297.0. "bad-COBOL -> good-COBOL convertors?" by RENFRO::POWELL (Reed B Powell 422-7291 PTO Sales Support) Fri Jan 25 1991 00:47

    I posted this in the COBOL notes file, but didn't get any nibbles:
    
    Any ideas on the following:
    
Customer apparently has a bunch of COBOL programs that are pretty
messy.  They have learned of a set of programs from XA SYSTEMS, one is
called RETROFIT,  the other PATHVIEW.  These are both IBM applications.
What they supposedly do is to convert "spaghetti COBOL code" to
structured COBOL code. 84 Lumber wants to know if any such capability
exists for doing the similar sort of things on VAX COBOL.

While the methodology for doing this is well understood, in terms of
compiler theory, I've not seen anyone advertise such a product for VAX
COBOL.  In addition, I doubt very much that a person in EIS would
generally have the background to handle this on a consulting basis.

If there is nothing on VMS available, one approach would be to contact
XA SYSTEMS and see if their IBM based product would handle VAX COBOL (we
would need to know what version customer is using).  It might be possible for
customer to handle this through a service bureau if there is no product
available on VMS.

Another approach, depending on how messy and undocumented their current
code is, would be to simply have someone go in and convert the mess by
hand.  That would be expensive, and possibly risky (especially if the
code is as bad as they say); we would need to know the cost of software
products such as those from XA SYSTEMS to compare with.

Finally, if software does exist, we might consider buying the license,
doing the conversion as consulting, and then having the software around
for doing the same for other customers.

All ideas are appreciated.

thanks,
Reed