From Newsgroup: comp.lang.cobol
El domingo, 14 de agosto de 2011, 6:51:57 (UTC-7), Pete Dashwood escribi||:
Fritz Wuehler wrote:
Can anyone recommend a COBOL compiler for Solaris SPARC? I see
Alchemy has one but I read a pretty serious asskicking by Pete on
this newsgroup some years ago and don't know if there's been any improvement. No pricing shown on their site leading me to believe
they're one of those dynamic pricing companies that gouge based on
how much they think they can get out of you. I'm just a privateer
without many resources. Does anyone know what it costs? Are they
still part of Fujitsu or just a distributor?
I don't suppose there's anything free and good available? Thanks
gents. an only speak from what I know.
I can only speak from what I know. I don't know which asskicking you're referring to, but I don't come here specifically to kick asses. Having said that, if I see something I think is bad, I'll say so. Generally, I call them like I see them and I have no axe to grind.
Here's a very short expression of my opinion on this (Please note this is OPINION, it is arguable...):
1. Both Fujitsu and Micro Focus have COBOL versions that run on Solaris.
2. Both companies have excellent products, however, having used both, I
would go for Fujitsu.
3. In terms of support I have been extremely impressed by Micro Focus who
are interested and supportive through their forums. Every problem I had
which I couldn't fix myself, they fixed in a friendly and timely way. And there was no charge, even though I was evaluating their software and had not bought it. It was exemplary. (I contributed to their forum with a script for batch compiling COM components as a "thank you". A couple of hundred people looked at or downloaded it.)
4. Cannot say the same for Alchemy. They did a cost cutting exercise a while back (about the time they did the deal with Fujitsu) and fired people who really knew their stuff (one of them posted here recently). As a result, their "support" suffered to the point where I decided to undertake my own support of the product and spent considerable time becoming familiar enough with it to be able to do that. I haven't dealt with them for about four
years and the last time I did, they pissed me off so badly I moved off COBOL as a development tool.(They did me a favour; every cloud has a silver lining.). The attitude I encountered was very much one of "you are locked in to COBOL and we are the only game in town". I had allocated and budgeted funds for Net COBOL for .Net but when I went to buy it I was treated very shabbily and it was like I was expected to beg them to supply it to me. (A strange concept of customer service...) Turned out I didn't need it anyway as all my legacy COBOL runs fine on .Net using InterOP services, after being refactored or wrapped as objects. It can be maintained with the standard NetCOBOL and PowerCOBOL compilers which I already have. I'm gradually replacing them with C# but the standard (free) Microsoft options (C#,
Visual Studio, .Net, InterOP services) buy me all the time I need to do
this. The alternative was to move to Micro Focus, and although they are a good company, there's no way I will pay in principle for a run time every time I distribute an application.
5. Since 2007, Open COBOL has supported Solaris.
6. ORACLE ProCOBOL also runs on Solaris.
Bottom line: The best product is Fujitsu but the American vendor (Alchemy) leaves much to be desired. An alternative would be Micro Focus but you must license the runtime and pay a royalty every time you distribute an application. Open COBOL is probably not yet "Industrial Strength" (They
don't support Objects. That's a show-stopper for me...) ORACLE is probably not cheap, but neither are the others, except Open COBOL.
Invest the time and learn C# (It's fun and it is free :-)) You can learn it from free videos (I did...) and possibly the odd book as a reference. I recommend the WROX series "C# Professional", but the videos are really good and mostly free. (If you download Visual C# from Microsoft the startup page of Visual Studio points you at some free "getting started" videos.) Anything you get stuck with there is instant help available, along with sample code, from the multi-million user base via the Internet.
COBOL, according to the Tiobe base, is now 47th programming language and falling. (Last time I looked, about 18 months ago, it was 30th).
C# is 5th and rising.
This only matters if you are looking for a job.
Good luck with your search. Let us know how you get on and what you do in
the end.
Pete.
--
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."
COBOL is Alive used on banks as always
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