COBOL Supports the World’s Business Operations
March 17, 2021
“Fine wine gets better with age,” or so the phrase goes. Oddly, this aphorism also in a way applies to COBOL. It was great when it was developed, but over the 60-plus years it’s been around, it’s actually improved in some ways, even enabling many companies to enter the digital age. Reports suggesting hundreds of […]
ArticlesToday’s Business Systems Run on COBOL
March 10, 2021
In my past life I was a COBOL developer. Yes, I did use Herman Hollerith 80-column punched cards to do my programming. Yes, COBOL has been around for a very long time and yes, COBOL is very alive and well in the year 2021! 60 years old and counting. Admiral Grace Hopper and COBOL Let’s […]
E-BooksTechChannel E-book: Unlocking COBOL Business Value
March 9, 2021
The ubiquity of both the IBM Z platform and COBOL programming language comes from the forethought IBM put into each in 1964 when the first mainframe was launched. COBOL was optimized for business processing with no need to recompile programs. As a result, it continues to run the world’s economy today. But many COBOL shops […]
ArticlesOld COBOL Dog, New JSON, XML and Mobile Workload Tricks
March 3, 2021
What is an old dog? What is a new trick? If COBOL were a human, its 61 years might make it seem eligible for early retirement. But something strange has been happening in the world of established business technology, beginning with the non-retirement of highly-experienced technologists. Yes, there are plenty of people who have followed […]
ArticlesHow COBOL REDEFINES the Way You Think About Business Programming
February 1, 2021
“I got it started. It should build itself now.” So a local builder advised a cousin-in-law of mine in rural Poland who was building a house, and had requested assistance with putting the roof in place. Being more of an academic than a builder, my cousin was baffled—all he saw was a mostly unfinished roof […]
Open Mainframe Summit Celebrates Successful First Annual Event
October 26, 2020
On Sept. 16 and 17, 2020, the Open Mainframe Project held the first inaugural Open Mainframe Summit, which brought together several members of the IBM Z® community, including students, educators and industry professionals, to share their insights on the mainframe. The virtual event gave mainframers a chance to connect online to share best practices, discuss […]
ArticlesCOBOL Training Course Aims to Educate New Mainframers
June 9, 2020
In response to the technical challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic, Open Mainframe Project announced a COBOL Training Course that offers introductory-level COBOL programming materials with VS Code. COBOL helps run some of the most mission-critical applications within mainframe systems in large companies across the world, and is a necessity to maintaining the performance of […]
ArticlesEzriel Gross on the Importance of CICS
May 1, 2020
Reg Harbeck talks with Ezriel Gross about his history with CICS and its continued importance in the mainframe community
ArticlesCOBOL Isn’t Slowing Anything Down
April 28, 2020
There are several misperceptions and assumptions with respect to COBOL and the latest difficulties several government entities have been experiencing due to COVID-19. COBOL and the IBM Z® platform were leading-edge technologies 40 years ago and they both still are today. They’re increasingly innovative with each release. Both are quite modern and expertly designed tools. […]
ArticlesModernization Carries Varied Meanings for Different People
March 23, 2020
When the IBM z15 was announced I couldn’t wait to read the information about the advancements and changes that we would all see. I quickly read about System Recovery Boost, integrated zEDC compression, standard rack space frame, double cache density on each chip, etc. The modern mainframe; the fastest, most resilient and high availability, commercially-available […]