COBOL

United States Air Force SBSS ILS-S COBOL to Java on AWS Modernization

A major component of the system is 54 years old, written in COBOL, and provides retail-level business logic. The component runs on mainframes that have proven to be extremely difficult to change and manage, and the DoD needed to modernize the component to drive down operating costs and move to an open platform, while retaining all functionality....

The U.S. Air Force uses the Integrated Logistics System – Supply (ILS-S), of which the Standard Base Supply System (SBSS) is a major part, as a mainstay of their supply chain. The SBSS program includes over 1.5 million lines of COBOL, as well as smaller numbers of C and Assembly, all of which are to be transformed into Java. 

Modernization of code demands a high degree of precision. It is absolutely critical that the reengineered software performs in the same manner as the original. This requires two things: a rigorous approach to code refactoring based upon tried principles which retain the underlying logic; and a well-planned and consistent program of testing to ensure that logic is preserved and improvements do not in any way alter the function of the code. Testing is vital. Companies need to be certain that their modernized critical software will perform according to exact the same rules as the original.

Enormous amounts of COBOL code have been created and relied upon for decades. It really is the bedrock of early computing. But now, ancient COBOL systems are challenged because the original assumptions under which the code was written are no longer valid. COBOL was designed as a robust business language to handle batch oriented database operations in an ACID environment. Today, these vital systems, including financial, security, transportation, and healthcare solutions continue to run. But access is changed, processing requirements have changed, and the availability of coders to understand, maintain, and augment the systems diminishes year-by-year.

Premera Blue Cross required the assessment, transformation and re-factoring of its existing Automated Document Assembly System (ADAS). ADAS was written in WANG COBOL and self generated WANG COBOL programs tailoring health care booklets for specific customer needs. TSRI was selected to assess, transform, and re-factor the WANG COBOL code, migrating the system into a C++ Windows NT environment with full functional equivalency.

• Customer:  Premera Blue Cross
• Source & Target Language: COBOL to C++
• Lines of Code: Nearly 50,000
• Duration: 4 Months
• Services: Code Transformation, Automated Refactoring, Testing and Implementation Support, Transformation Blueprint®

The Reliability & Maintainability Information System (REMIS) is a key component of the Air Force Depot Maintenance System. Ten years after the successful modernization of REMIS in 2004, the US Air Force reached back out to TSRI to modernize the rest of the system as well as take the C++ we already produced to Java. The project was delivered on time and under budget by almost half a million dollars.

Amdocs Limited is a premier provider of services for billing, customer relationship management (CRM) and operations support systems (OSS) for the telecommunications industry. One of Amdocs’ major clients is the Sprint Nextel Corporation, whose billing, operations support and customer resource management services were written in about 5 million lines of MicroFocus COBOL and Pro*Cobol code, with an additional 5 million lines of C/C++ code.  After evaluating several options, TSRI was selected as Amdocs' preferred vendor for modernizing this critical system and improving Sprint's ROI.  

In 2003, the functions of the US Immigration and Nationalization Service (INS) were taken over by the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including the BCIS FBISHED system written in the COBOL language. CSC contracted with TSRI as its sub-contractor to conduct a pilot project demonstrating the technical feasibility of automated modernization technologies.

The U.S. Air Force's Weapons System Cost Retrieval System (WSCRS), designation H036C, was written in COBOL and run on an Amdahl-5890 platform with a flat file data base. The system required modernization by the Wright-Patterson Mission System Group (MSG) to improve base support for the Air Force weapon financial systems.

The National Endowments for the Arts (NEA) Grants Management System (GMS), Financial Management System (FMIS), and Automated Panel Bank System (APBS) were unique one-of-a-kind 27-year old legacy systems written in Wang VS COBOL, running on a WANG VS Operating System, and using a WANG VS DMS database. TSRI was engaged to transform these systems into C++ and completed the project successfully in 7 months.