midkiff@Thalatta.COM (Michelle Midkiff) (11/07/90)
The manager of an IBM mainframe site in this area has a rather
obscure need and I'm hoping someone on the net may have some
answers. This site is running a large number of old, fragile,
and very inter-dependent COBOL and RPG programs. The environment
is VSAM, CICS on VSE, running on an IBM 370. This manager is
looking to position himself for the growth and change which are
inevitable in his industry and sees Relational Databases as the
way to go. Because the current programs are such a hodge-podge,
he doesn't want to take the chance of messing things up by diving
in and developing a whole new application at once (this is also
out of the question because of budget constraints and the
commitment of continued service to their clients). What this
guy wants to do is download all of his existing data from VSAM
files to a SQL-based database and continue running his current
programs WITHOUT ANY CHANGES. Then sit down and design changes
to the application software so that it can be implemented in
phases. The potential hardware platform is still under discussion.
So the big question is, has anyone ever done this or do you know
of a tool which will make COBOL and RPG programs think that
they're still accessing their usual VSAM files when in truth, the
data is being accessed and stored in a relational database?
i.e. How do you get from VSAM to UNIX with a kind of backwards,
phased-in approach?
Please email. If there is enough interest, I will post a summary
of responses to the net.
Thanks in advance,
Michelle
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In-Real-Life: Michelle Midkiff-Wannamaker
Thalatta Corporation, (+1 206 455 9838) Bellevue, WA
Domain: midkiff@Thalatta.COM Path: ...!sun!sunup!thebes!midkiff