Automatically Migrating COBOL Indexed Files: A Case Study

Many organizations are faced with addressing the modernization of what has come to be known as their “legacy systems.” Unfortunately, the definition of a legacy application has become obscured in the industry. A negative connotation has sometimes been assigned to the term for purposes of selling an agenda of reengineering applications that have been developed in presumably mature (a.k.a. old) software environments — COBOL programming environments are a case in point. Scrutiny toward the goal of identifying such tactics should be undertaken, as an organization may be swayed into buying technology for the sake of the technology, with the primary benefactors being the technology’s providers.