Re: cobol code assessment


apple.time@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> My boss just asked me to do a Cobol code assessment for our company.
> He has given me no guidelines on what is expected of me. I have worked
> with cobol for 20 years, so I know it quite well. I am not to use any
> 'tools' for creating metrics on the code. I guess the company is
> trying to decide if our programs are 'good enough', or whether we
> should be rewriting them in some newer technology. We have both
> on-line systems for data entry and batch processing. They want me to
> have an analysis for them in a week. HELP! What do I do? fyi... I
> plan to talk to everyone on the team.... from programmers, system
> analysts, data base administrators, help desk, users, etc. But, they
> want me to examine the CODE itself as well. This is the piece that I
> am unsure of. If you have any web addresses of how to do this, it
> would be MOST appreciated. Also, if any of you have done this, if you
> could show me your final analysis (without the company identifying
> information, of course!) THANKS

As well as the other suggestions posted, your company's inventory of
COBOL programs probably contains several suites of COBOL programs for
separate though linked functions such as payroll, order processing,
inventory, purchasing, etc, written at different times by different
groups/teams. Some will be better designed and written than others.
You probably won't have time to examine all the programs so you could
take samples from each suite, based perhaps on the advice of the people
usually working on them. Some suites might be better suited to
replacement by other technologies than others (or just being redone
again in COBOL to a better plan), so you must be careful not to tar
everything with the same brush.

You might produce a plan of how you intend to do the analysis for your
boss to review before you proceed, as he/she might have useful
suggestions for the plan details and will then be less able to say that
it didn't meet the expectations.

With regard to assessing the styles of program coding and irrespective
of your installation's standards and personal preferences, you must try
to assess whether the code is easily readable (with or without
comments), easily maintainablem, reasonably efficient and does what it
is supposed to do.

Your intention to include users is commendable and should include both
trainees and experienced users, an assessment of how long it takes to
learn how to use the system could be helpful as would an assessment of
the user documentation.

The presence or absence of audit trails should be considered.

Good luck, Robert

.

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