Re: Old broken COBOL programs from the 70s and 80s

>>> On 7/18/2008 at 1:19 PM, in message
<de34a168-288d-4a51-81aa-5fb754e737e0@k13g2000hse.googlegroups.com>,
x01001x<xemail@softhome.net> wrote:

>> >Why were companies still using such ancient code in 1999?
>> >What kind of hardware would even still be heavily used at that time
>> >which would support old COBOL code?
>>
>> Pretty simple actually. The code was doing what it was designed to
>> do. You don't fix or replace a wheel that isn't broken.
>
> Ok, then I will be more specific.
> What are some real world examples of software utilities written in
> COBOL that would have been used from 1980 until 1999?
> What kind of companies would be using these utilities?

Banking deposit and loans systems, in our case.

Billing systems and other financial systems in other cases.

These things simply don't differ much as the years go by.

We are constantly adding new features as required by the business. But the
old things still happen. If you make a deposit we add it to your balance.
Make a withdrawal and we subtract it. Bounce a check and we charge you an
enormous fee. :-) What possible reason would we have to replace this? In
the mid-80s (before my time!) we converted our 'databases' from VSAM
(indexed files) to DL/I. The programs themselves, though, other than the
data access routines didn't really change (fom what I'm told).

In the future we may convert to DB2. In this case I imagine more of a
rewrite than the previous, in order to take advantage of SQL and perhaps
having business logic at the database level. But I am betting our 'deposit
system posting program' will still exist, and still be in Cobol.

By the way, we've had 8-digit dates in our databases since at least the mid
80s. Perhaps it was done during the VSAM -> DL/I conversion. Perhaps it
was "always" that way.

Frank