Home » Information Builders Magazine Fall 1999 » The State of the Legacy

The State of the Legacy

 

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Just a few years ago, agencies were first implementing new UNIX or NT file servers with access to legacy data in client/server architectures.

A year or two later, agencies began taking a similar approach for implementing interactive Web sites.

Now the Agriculture Department's Processed Commodities System Division (PCSD) is going a step beyond what was once thought possible with their new Domestic Electronic Bid Entry System (DEBES). The division's IT managers are building Web server capability directly into their MVS/COBOL mainframe environment thanks, in large part, to the Web390 server from Information Builders.

"Web390 allows us to use COBOL CGI behind the server," said David Liem, the USDA DEBES project leader. "It's one of the few products that allows us to write in COBOL on a mainframe using MVS COBOL. On a smaller platform, you have to learn a new language." DEBES is being designed and implemented at USDA's Kansas City processing center and will be operational later this year. "Because we're a mainframe shop, we have a lot of COBOL expertise here," Liem said. "The approach we are taking allows us to make the best use of our people, who already know the mainframe, IDMS, COBOL, the configuration management tools, and who basically need very little training in order to write this application."

Big Bids, Thin Clients

DEBES is comprised of more than 80 new COBOL programs supporting an electronic relationship between several USDA activities and vendors who bid on $1.2 billion in domestic distribution of food assistance yearly.

Both the Agriculture Marketing Service and the Farm Service Agency will link via Internet to more than 200 vendors through DEBES. Vendors will use a thin client browser-based platform running JavaScript and CGI for submitting bid information.

Officials expect to achieve major cost- and time-savings because DEBES, like a forerunner system for food export EBES), will reduce manual contracting and eliminate layers of data input formerly performed by agency staff. EBES, however, used an intermediary UNIX server and necessitated that some agency IT staff learn newer languages. "With cut-backs we needed to get around a long learning curve," Liem said.

Cashing in on COBOL

Unique implementations like DEBES might be commonplace as Information Builders' Web390 server grows in acceptance. In recent years, agencies have re-invested heavily in MVS/COBOL in order to protect legacy systems from Y2K snafus. Once thought a doomed language, COBOL has been reinvigorated in most agencies through Y2K work, when many Internet-related applications have been fashioned. Information Builders officials said that Web390 offers "instant browser access to any mainframe 3270-based application," as well as the ability for designers to produce fully customized HTML screens supporting existing applications. With Web390, JavaScript help screens, HTML drop-down boxes and tabular input forms can be created, while conforming to mainframe application logic. USDA's use of JavaScript in DEBES (rather than Java apps) further eases system use by giving clients an uncomplicated electronic relationship with the agency – which Liem said is important when "you are creating an electronic link like we are with a vendor base ranging from large multinational firms to small mom and pop's."

Reprinted with permission from Government Computer News

 

 

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