Re: Bootcamp

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!!)