City of West Covina Turns HP3000 Dead-End into a .NET Superhighway; COBOL moved from HP3000 to .NET.SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Using NetCOBOL for .NET(TM), West Covina West Covina, city (1990 pop. 96,086), Los Angeles co., S Calif., in the San Gabriel valley; settled 1905, inc. 1923. Before World War II, West Covina was a small rural community where walnuts, wheat, and livestock were raised. Service Group (WCSG WCSG WWMCCS Council Support Group ), an enterprise division of the City of West Covina, and a section of West Covina Police Department, has turned a potential disaster (an end-of-life announcement for the HP3000) into a tremendous opportunity for the future. Applications, such as computer-aided dispatch, that provide critical services for the City of West Covina and 69 other client agencies, have been migrated from the HP3000 to Microsoft's .NET framework, "opening up a new world of possibilities," according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Vern Morton, software development manager for WCSG. No Longer Trapped For WCSG this means that instead of feeling trapped by the character-style interfaces and functionality provided by a single vendor, their applications can move into the 21st century using graphical interfaces See GUI. , taking advantage of the advanced controls available, with access to tools, technologies and utilities from many different companies. For organizations in similar situations, WCSG has demonstrated that existing COBOL COBOL: see programming language. COBOL in full Common Business-Oriented Language. High-level computer programming language, one of the first widely used languages and for many years the most popular language in the business community. code is an asset that can be preserved and enhanced by moving it to Microsoft's leading edge .NET Framework. WCSG accomplished this with careful planning and execution, helped by a willingness to tackle apparent roadblocks, such as the character-based ViewPlus HP3000 interfaces, and with a little creativity (writing their own routines to convert these to WinForms - ASP.NET pages). Describing their motivations and benefits, Morton said, "We selected .NET and NetCOBOL(R), because we have a very large investment in applications that work very well, and could be enhanced with new features. Moving to .NET allows us to build on what we have and expand to areas that were previously out-of-range - actually opening up a whole new world. Since we did not have to spend resources rewriting re·write v. re·wrote , re·writ·ten , re·writ·ing, re·writes v.tr. 1. To write again, especially in a different or improved form; revise. 2. software, we have been able to move much more quickly." Project Summary Using a tight-knit team of six programmers and two support personnel, WCSG migrated more than 1,000 programs (more than 1 million lines of code The statements and instructions that a programmer writes when creating a program. One line of this "source code" may generate one machine instruction or several depending on the programming language. A line of code in assembly language is typically turned into one machine instruction. ) in less than 12 months. All the COBOL code was migrated to Fujitsu Software's NetCOBOL for .NET; data that was stored in HP's TurboImage database was moved to Microsoft SQL Server A relational DBMS from Microsoft that is a major component of the Windows Server System. It is Microsoft's high-end client/server database and is closely integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio and the Microsoft Office System. . Some critical interfaces were rewritten using Microsoft's C#, with the remainder converted to WinForms automatically by some in-house-created utilities. A multi-layer architecture was selected with separate servers for Web, application and database layers. Extensive testing was performed before these critical systems were placed in production to ensure a smooth transition for WCSG's users. More Information For the full story and more details about NetCOBOL for Windows go to: http://www.netcobol.com/ About Fujitsu Software Corporation Fujitsu Software Corporation, based in Sunnyvale, California Sunnyvale ([sʌniveil]) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is one of the major cities that make up the Silicon Valley. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 131,760. , is part of the Fujitsu Limited (TOKYO:6702) family. The wholly owned subsidiary Wholly Owned Subsidiary A subsidiary whose parent company owns 100% of its common stock. Notes: In other words, the parent company owns the company outright and there are no minority owners. delivers one of the world's broadest lines of application infrastructure software products, including the Interstage(R) Suite and NetCOBOL(R). Fujitsu Software Corporation leverages Fujitsu's international scope and expertise in developing and providing information technology solutions, including more than 4,000 software developers worldwide. To learn more about Fujitsu Software Corporation, visit www.fsw.fujitsu.com. About Fujitsu Fujitsu is a leading provider of customer-focused IT and communications solutions for the global marketplace. Pace-setting device technologies, highly reliable computing computing - computer and communications products, and a worldwide corps of systems and services experts uniquely position Fujitsu to deliver comprehensive solutions that open up infinite possibilities for its customers' success. Headquartered in Tokyo, Fujitsu Limited (TOKYO:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.7 trillion yen (US$44.5 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2005. For more information, please see: www.fujitsu.com Copyright 2005 Fujitsu Software Corporation. Fujitsu, the Fujitsu Symbol Mark, Interstage, and NetCOBOL are registered trademarks of Fujitsu Limited. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners |
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