The transition of application programs from COBOL to a fourth generation language

It is becoming increasingly desirable to move older application programs from their traditional mainframe execution environments to networked workstations. These management information systems are most often written in COBOL and store their data in files. A networked environment enables the use of a relational database management system and its fourth-generation access language, SQL. A conceptual framework is described that comprises a variety of strategies for making such a transition. Decision criteria for selecting among them are then presented. Finally, a variety of experiments intended to explore the strategies are recounted. The experiments include efforts to automate parts of the process.<>