Introduction

Welcome to P3/COBOL!

We're excited to introduce you to the world of P3/COBOL - a strategic solution designed to address the challenge of advancing technological progress without sacrificing decades of meticulously built data processing technology and business knowledge.

Philosophy and Goals

P3/COBOL operates on the fundamental assumption known as "COBOL lives as a specification" (CLaaS), grounded in decades of hands-on experience in providing COBOL and COBOL-based tools. COBOL's resilience as the language for business processes has made it a living specification for these processes.

Key Concepts

P3/COBOL is guided by key concepts:

• ✨ Continuous Adjustment
  Real-world business processes cannot be halted for a migration.
• Legacy Complexity
  Much of the legacy COBOL logic is not easily understood by today's organizations.
• ⏱️ Efficiency and Maintainability
  Tasks performed by COBOL logic can often be done more efficiently using non-COBOL techniques.
• 🎯 Preservation of Logic
  Some COBOL logic must be carried out exactly as specified for current and future operations.

P3/COBOL turns that living COBOL specification into executable Java through a straightforward compilation pipeline:

The generated Java remains a faithful realization of the COBOL specification, while selected business rules may later be relocated into hand-crafted Java when and as that becomes advantageous.

Progressive Re-Engineering

P3/COBOL allows existing COBOL logic to be updated while incrementally providing subsets via non-COBOL approaches. This treats legacy COBOL logic as a detailed "specification", with its implementation generated automatically in the targeted modern technology - Java.

Key Features

P3/COBOL provides essential features:

• Legacy Dialect Support
  Accommodating most legacy COBOL dialects for mission-critical applications.
• Performance
  Approaching the limit for modern, managed code execution.
• Pure Java Technology
  Ensuring no unnecessary platform dependencies.
• Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
  A mature, powerful tool accessible to both COBOL and Java developers.
• Business Rule Migration
  Support for moving business rules incrementally from COBOL to Java.
• Java Ecosystem Integration
  Immediate access to a vast array of publicly-available Java-based solutions and frameworks.
• Always-On Platform
  Providing a running, verifiable execution platform at all migration stages.

Embrace the 3 P's

P3/COBOL stands for Performance, Precision, and Possibilities - the 3 P's that promise a robust and forward-looking programming experience. Dive in and explore the potential that P3/COBOL brings to your programming journey!

Acknowledgement

COBOL is an industry language and is not the property of any company or group of companies, or of any organization or group of organizations.

No warranty, expressed or implied, is made by any contributor or by the CODASYL COBOL Committee as to the accuracy and functioning of the programming system and language. Moreover, no responsibility is assumed by any contributor, or by the committee, in connection therewith. The authors and copyright holders of the copyrighted materials used herein: FLOW-MATIC (trademark of Sperry Rand Corporation), Programming for the UNIVAC (R) I and II, Data Automation Systems copyrighted 1958,1959, by Sperry Rand Corporation; IBM Commercial Translater Form No F 28-8013, copyrighted 1959 by IBM; FACT, DSI 27A5260-2760, copyrighted 1960 by Minneapolis-Honeywell have specifically authorized the use of this material in whole or in part, in the COBOL specifications. Such authorization extends to the reproduction and use of COBOL specifications in programming manuals or similar publications.

This publication's use of some text from the COBOL standards is under the preceding acknowledgement.