Cobol on OEL 5

Question

Hello,
I have got a specific requirement of running a COBOL code on EL5. Not sure if GCC includes the compiler for COBOL.
Currently what I can think of installing openCOBOL in EL5 server and hand it over to developers.
From what I think need to do is, compile COBOL code using openCOBOL which will give "C" compatible code. Then GCC will take care.
Please let me know, if there is any specific solution for retrofitting legacy softwares/code in OEL.
Thanks & Regards,
Nirav Kamdar

Answer 1

Fahd Mirza wrote:
And I remember the Y2K frenzy and its relation with the Cobol.
regardsWhich really had nothing at all to do with cobol. It had to do with how systems had been designed to store and deal with dates. It was perceived as a "cobol problem" simply because most of the code in use was in cobol. Nobody mentions that most of the remediation was was also in cobol - which puts the lie to the assertion that it was a cobol issue to start with. Dates were generally stored in fields defined as PIC 9(6), only allowing for 2 digits for the year. There was nothing about cobol that prevented storing a date in a PIC 9(8) field to preserve the century component as well. It just wasn't common practice because at the time the systems were designed, storage was expensive. The lesson for systems designers is that code changes all the time but data structures live nearly forever, so one must design the data with very long time windows in mind.
I had an interesting discussion a few months ago with a young programmer who expressed the opinion that the Y2K scare was just a big to-do over nothing. His evidence was that nothing really seemed to happen. (he was in junior high at the time) I informed him that while there had been some wild claims, the problem was very real and that the reason nothing seemed to happen was because armies of programmers like myself spent two years working to make sure that was the case.