COB2WEB a toolset for migrating to web services

Abstract

This paper describes a tool set for constructing web services from existing main frame COBOL programs. The first tool - COBAudit - is intended to identify candidates for web services. The second tool - COBStrip - serves to extract only that portion of the code required to fulfill the service. The third tool - COBWrap - wraps the code extracted from original code and converts it to an executable component. The fourth tool - COBLink - connects the wrapped component to the web by generating a WSDL interface. The tools are currently under test within a project for a German financial service with an insurance system of 25 million lines of COBOL code running under IMS on the IBM mainframe.