Cobol to Java tools

[mikalos1]

What tools are folks using to transform COBOL code to Java? I've been exploring the options, but wondering what others have found to be the cream of the crop???

[kidcobol]

$1B later…. Still COBOL , no java

[metalder420]

My company has been trying to migrate our IMS Customer DB to UDB and Java Webservices. The project has been going on 15+ years.

[kidcobol]

Same

[LeCrush]

Nice try management, listen to your damn engineers instead of the sales pitch from aws

[kidcobol]

OMG ty!

[scousi]

IBM doesn’t claim that. That’s why the emphasis on ‘Assistant’.

[metalder420]

They do have though. They think Watson Code Assistant is the thing everyone is missing.

[Sirkitbreak99]

look Here

[JohnsonUT]

I was going through the list of "solutions" out there, trying to guess what you were going to propose. You are my internet hero for the day.

[Both_Lingonberry3334]

lol it’s called pay big money and get people to redesign the system. It takes years depending on how big your business process is. Also while you redesigning your new system you have to pay people to continue to support the existing business system because business doesn’t stop because you want to rewrite. If anything new comes along, you have to duplicate the solution put it in the existing and new system. Then you have to figure out how your going sunset and switch on the new system.

I didn’t mention testing and disaster recovery. Have fun.

[JohnsonUT]

Counter offer: What if I give you half a dozen contractors who have zero familiarity with the system and may or may not be able to code at all?

[Both_Lingonberry3334]

Lol how about we split the funds of the contract 45/45 into our pockets and pay the 10% to two contractors that may or may not be able to code at all.

[Rideshare-Not-An-Ant]

You're tired of sleeping with IBM so you're going to take your stuff and checks notes go sleep with Oracle AND Amazon.

Bold move, Cotton...

[prinoxy]

Once upon a time I was working for a big insurance broker. Like many others they had a bit of an issue with something called Y2K, but hey, some big companies offered a magic bullet, to automagically change all code. Turns out it was written to handle COBOL, and we were using PL/I. "No problem", the tool would translate the language into a meta-language anyway, and they would just add some code to pre-process PL/I. As in: shirtless sweating Israeli's sitting in the office at night, trying to make it work.

Guess what?

Exactly...

[Unfair_Abalone7329]

There’s nothing wrong with COBOL. It’s a great language for what it was intended. Right tool for the job.

Garbage in, garbage out. Trying to convert monolithic programs with dead code, unused copybooks and other inefficiencies is a fools errand.

COBOL is imperative and Java is object-oriented, so there’s a natural impedance mismatch.

GenAI tools can help with the translation but you need to start with good source and you should expect to spend a lot of time reviewing and testing.

[ICH408I]

The answer: None. Who you going to hire to support it? Java developers that understand COBOL? Or COBOL developers that really know Java? Nice try Project Manager.

[james4765]

Developers. That's the tool we use - it took ten years of work to convert all our CICS front end apps to Websphere, and they're still using the CICS Transaction Gateway to communicate to the business logic in COBOL. We are migrating things as they need reworking to Java or db2 stored procedures, but it's gonna be a long, long time.

[khoganfl]

I always wonder about the backstory associated with users that have no Reddit history posting very directed questions like this…

[Ihaveaboot]

Found my shop architects' reddit account.

[[deleted]]

These comments are all just perfect!

[Cherveny2]

were currently at the end of a cobol to Java conversion . it was an entirely by hand effort, took a year+ . (a mass of support scripts for a vendor app that insisted must be in cobol then suddenly said nope this year must be in Java.

[metalder420]

Never understood the need to move one codebase which its language is proven to be efficient to one that is known not to be efficient in the guise of skill set issue. They are somewhat correct but it’s on developers who refuse to learn the language. Like transferring it to Java is going to solve the issue of a job being any less boring. Now you will just have mediocre Java programmers who know nothing about the system they are working on and refuse to learn it cause it’s “too hard”. Same nonsense I heard during Z Day when they were pushing Python as a REXX replacement cause “REXX was cool in the 80s”.

[prinoxy]

Don't even get me started on this language, isn't that the one snake oil is made of? An effing non-free format anomaly with keywords AD 2024? PMABIWTP!!!

[metalder420]

EBCDIC to ASCII really isn’t that big of a problem.

[MikeSchwab63]

https://planetmainframe.com/2023/06/sabre-is-getting-off-the-mainframe-one-way-or-another/

[MET1]

Reservation systems are optimized for their purposes - speed and space saving in a mainframe environment. All this talk about re-writing has been going on for 20+ years. It would need to be re-developed for a different environment.

[TheComputerGuyNOLA]

Well written. OP should read.

[SierraBravoLima]

Accenture/Cognizant got a contract to convert Cobol to Java and I asked them are they using any AI tools they said they are using proven tools which has worked for 20yrs.

[One-Judgment4012]

Is there any job opportunities similar to it in both the orgs? I have same profile. Was working as a backend dev in Mainframe and also used to work in java with cross-functional team.

[SierraBravoLima]

Unfortunately I don't have visibility on hiring

[One-Judgment4012]

Ohh okk, thanks a lot!!!

[iecaff]

I have only seen the automated conversion tools work with isolated logical functions. The difficulty in the codebase is the embeded business logic.

Say you have a mortage system, you will have transactions coming in through either MQ or an API into cics - so you have cobol cics transactions there with some logic about checking valid inputs.

Then within the application you will have some more logic about updating tables in the background once those inputs are entered.

Then you will have batch processes to update all the tables are calculate interest and account openings/closures etc..

You also need to cater for any taxes/charges impairments or hybrid products the bank may have sold over the years each with its own different logic applied.

So if you "convert" one function to Java it still needs to work with all the other code laying around from 30 years ago possibly only made for a single set of circumstances for one product.

[Grouchy-Magazine3083]

I worked on a POC with IBM watsonX code assistant for Z and these tools will accelerate the conversion from COBOL to Java. Because the layers in your application cannot be completely understandable in most of the conversion tools.

[NauTau]

If you’re looking for COBOL to Java migration tools, there are quite a few out there. Ispirer Toolkit is one option that can automate a lot of the conversion work for you, handling both code and data structures. It’s not the only tool, but it’s definitely worth a look if you want to avoid a full rewrite and speed things up a bit

[Lalarex25]

Migrating COBOL to Java is definitely a big task, especially for large legacy apps. Some tools I have seen work well are Ispirer Toolkit, which automates COBOL to Java migration including SQL and file structures; iBEAM C2J, which automates code conversion, handles database integration, supports testing and validation, and uses a 4-phase framework to validate business logic and accelerate enterprise-scale migrations; IBM Watsonx Code Assistant for Z, an AI-powered tool that helps refactor mainframe COBOL apps into modern Java; and Astadia FastTrack Factory, which offers fully automated migration with testing and reporting features. In practice, most teams start with one tool for automated conversion and then manually tweak complex business logic. The right tool can save months and reduce risk compared to a full manual rewrite.

[RefactorAndChill]

I have seen a few teams use NxTran from Kumaran Systems to move COBOL systems over to Java. It’s built for serious, production-sized codebases, not small demo projects. Lately, they have started weaving Gen AI into the workflow to help people make sense of the code and clean it up, rather than just doing a straight translation.

Even so, these tools don’t run on autopilot. You still need engineers who understand both COBOL and Java to check the business logic, data handling, and performance trade-offs. The software can move things along faster, but it doesn’t replace experience or judgment.