RE: Converting from CICS (was no subject)

Thank you very much.  This information will be very helpful to us.  Thanks for
taking the time to respond!





"Schaefer P. ONeill" <soneill@trak5.com> on 12/31/2001 10:53:48 PM

Please respond to cobol400-l@midrange.com

To:   cobol400-l@midrange.com
cc:    (bcc: Dusty Hansen/UT/FBFS)

Subject:  RE: Converting from CICS (was no subject)



--
I hope this is Helpful & On-Topic ...

We are going live next week with the conversion of 600+ Batch COBOL
programs and 150+ CICS/BMS programs from VSE to AS/400 ILE COBOL.  In
addition, we also converted 3 Major Vendor Financial Applications which
included 1500+ copy books, 400 or so Batch programs and a CICS Screen
Application which supports about 400-450 screen maps.  LOTS OF STUFF.

This project was started in Late June ... Essentially SIX months.

I would like to tell you that we have implemented CICS/400 for the VSE/CICS
programs/applications.  IT SCREAMS ... when we started, we couldn't find
ANYONE who would admit to using this IBM product, but IT IS THE REAL THING.

We did not use and "Code Converters" because the cost and benefit did not
match up.  We did use some PC based tools which allowed us to edit 100+
programs at a time to make "global" changes required for some portions of
the programs.

In general, the MAJOR headache was in the AS/400 implementation of ILE
COBOL.  The reality is that 20+ years of various programmers had brought
numerous "programming styles" to the code base.  ILE expects clean & proper
handling of numeric data fields and MANY changes were needed there.  Fields
initialized with spaces do not default to zeros.  Also COMP is == BINARY in
VSE; but == Packed-Decimal in AS/400.  There is an undocumented compile
option COMPASBIN which will resolve this in converting the code is a problem.

I work for a Consulting company.  And, while we are always looking for
work, I will be happy to impart my advice where I can be of assistance.

Without hesitation, I want to give CICS/400 a big thumbs-up.  Compared to
the VSE box, the AS/400 performs > 10-to-1 better in both batch and
CICS.  In addition, the CICS task shells (for users) along with the control
region show minimal impact on either the iServer-730 or iServer-830.

Good Luck, and please feel free to contact me via this list, the CICS-L
list or via direct email.

Schaefer ONeill
Trak 5, Inc.


At 12:29 PM 12/27/01 , you wrote:



>I appreciate your response.  I would agree with teaching us mainframers the
>tricks of the 400.  I am sure there is a ton of stuff that we should be
>looking
>at.
>
>We are at the front end of the conversion.  We are not exactly what
>direction we
>are going to be going.  We have looked at two 3rd party vendors that claim
>they
>can convert all of our COBOL CICS to native.  The one bid we got back was
>extremely pricey however.  We are trying to decide if we can get some help
>from
>a vendor if we are going to have to do it ourselves, scary thought.  We
>are not
>aware of any tools other than vendors to help convert CICS to native.  Are
>there
>some out there?  We did look into CICS/400.  It was told to us that IBM
>does not
>support it anymore and has not done so for 4 years now.  It appears that there
>are only a very small handful who use it.  Is there more about CICS/400
>that we
>are missing?
>
>Again, Thanks so much for your help in our conversion.
>
>
>
>
>
>"Jon Paris" <Jon.Paris@Partner400.com> on 12/23/2001 05:26:03 PM
>
>Please respond to cobol400-l@midrange.com
>
>To:   cobol400-l@midrange.com
>cc:    (bcc: Dusty Hansen/UT/FBFS)
>
>Subject:  RE: Converting from CICS (was no subject)
>
>
>
>In general you do not need to worry about such things on the 400.  In fact
>one of the hardest things I have found in trying to teach mainframers about
>the 400 is that there a great many things you don't have to worry about!!
>The 400s virtual storage system does a great job.  If you have a valid
>reason for doing a transfer of control, it can be done - but the number of
>times you need to do it are few and far between - and certainly not usually
>for the kind of reason you mention.
>
>How are you doing the conversion?  Are you using tools to convert the CIVS
>to native or are you using CICS/400 ?
>
>Jon Paris
>Partner400
>
>
>
>
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