Mainframe to .NET migration

Question

Hi,

What are the various tools available for migrating a Mainframe application (front end, DB, Business Logic) into .NET (C#.NET or VB.NET) and SQL Server 2005.

The current Mainframe system has:

• CICS - front end,
• COBOL - language
• IDEAL and DATAComDB - database.

Thanks in advance.

Ajish

Answer 1

There is a CICS TxSeries and COBOL for .NET for the 'lesser' platforms, there's even a DB2 but I'm not sure how easy it's going to be to port IDEAL or DataCom to SQL - I don't even think that they're relational.

I would consider doing it in stages (i.e., front end first, and DB last) since that's probably the safest migration path. Your front end should be able to be ported to .NET and hopefuly still communicate with the mainframe DB. Then, modify it so that it can use both DataCom or SQL Server. Then drop support for DataCom and get rid of your mainframe.

That's what I'd do if I wanted to migrate (which I don't :-).

My question to you is: why? z/OS provides far more reliability and throughput than you'll ever get out of a Windows box. Is it the cost of maintenance? The fact that you're hardware is going out of service?

Without more info, there's not a lot than can be done. The people with the expertise on those products (IBM and CA) are not going to give you tools to migrate away from them.

Answer 2

I would recommend moving the COBOL system AS-IS to another platform using Micro Focus.