COBOL conversion tool

COBOL conversion tool

[Michael Talbot-Wilson]

I'm sure this is a FAQ, but I'm a new/occasional reader of this group
(incidentally, where/when IS the FAQ)?

I'd like to know whether there are COBOL-to-Ada converters available
for money or (better) costing little enough to be included in a free
Linux distribution.  I realise that "COBOL" and "free" don't go together
too well.

Is there any such beast?  If not, is it because there is no demand or
because there are insurmountable technical problems?

Cheers...
Michael Talbot-Wilson

Re: COBOL conversion tool

[Robert Dewar]

Michael asks

<<I'd like to know whether there are COBOL-to-Ada converters available
for money or (better) costing little enough to be included in a free
Linux distribution.  I realise that "COBOL" and "free" don't go together
too well.

Is there any such beast?  If not, is it because there is no demand or
because there are insurmountable technical problems?>>

Automatic translation from COBOL to Ada is neither technically feasible
nor desirable. The trouble is that typical COBOL code lacks both
procedural and data abstraction. It is possible to recover some of the
procedural abstraction automatically (but very difficult, and only a
partial job could be done), but VERY difficult to recover the missing
data abstraction. 

It is of course possible to convert COBOL to Ada in a manner that entirely
retains the semant9ic level of the COBOL, but this would probably produce
code that was even less maintainable than the original, and certainly
no improvement.