Micro Focus

Opening access to COBOL Data Files

For many organizations vital information is stored in COBOL data files, only accessible from COBOL programs. Often business requires a broader access to that data for reporting, business intelligence, data warehousing etc. While additional interfaces can be built with COBOL programs a longer term solution to meet the demand might be to allow access to that data from SQL.

Micro Focus Professional Services can open your COBOL Data Files for access through SQL by undertaking a project through assessment, pilot, build, testing and deployment stages based on your specific business objectives. Alternatively we can enable your development team to do the job themselves:

Aims and Approach

Micro Focus consultants will work with your development team to look at the available options:

  • Allow SQL access to the COBOL data files by implementing a Micro Focus partner ODBC/JDBC driver
  • Migrate the data to a RDBMS (Oracle, SQL Server …) but maintain the existing COBOL file access through a Micro Focus partner data access layer
  • Migrate the data to a RDBMS and replace the file access statements in COBOL with OpenESQL or native SQL 

The aim will be to help you assess the best solution based on your application structure and business requirements and timescales.

Once agree the next task will be to identify the next steps required to get to the target as well as estimate the effort required. Micro Focus may propose that you consider the use of partner’s technology or services.

Key Stages

Micro Focus consultants will work with your application development team as they:

  • Review the COBOL application’s structure and data access
  • Propose a new open access approach in line with the business needs
  • For migration to a RDBMS, define the file/field to table/column mapping
  • For replacement of the COBOL file access statements with SQL identify all the programs and lines of code affected
  • Where appropriate, set up a working example with a subset of the data
  • Estimate the effort to move the whole of the application to the new open data access if the COBOL data access statements are to be replaced