0

I would like to know any prices you have heard of for one-to-one conversion projects from Cobol code to a modern language. We are talking about programs with several hundred thousand lines of code.

durron597
  • 31,968
  • 17
  • 99
  • 158
David
  • 4,786
  • 11
  • 52
  • 80
  • most likely there's not a one-to-one ratio between cobol and a modern language. – John Boker Jan 10 '11 at 16:38
  • 1
    This question is too open-ended. I doubt if you will ever get a satisfactory (meaningful) answer. That said, have a look at the [NACA Project](http://media-tech.blogspot.com/2009/01/project-naca-migration-from-ibm.html) I don't know if the costs were outlined in any of their papers, but you should get some idea of how large/complex this sort of project is. – NealB Jan 10 '11 at 17:11
  • If you could get a good work estimate based on one sentence (which is highly unlikely) then coming up with a price will still have a lot of factors to consider. And even if you could come up with a valid price it really is only valid right now and wouldn't be valid for another time (e.g. next year) and place with different market factors. – Randy Levy Jan 10 '11 at 19:32
  • How could the question become more specific? I could never start describing the processes of the company, the architecture, nor the interfaces of the system, without it filling several documents. The number of users and the age of the system is also a bad indicator of anything. I still believe the question is highly relevant for many companies. – David Jan 10 '11 at 19:39
  • To be more specific, you could specify the environment (z/OS? HP/UX?), the compiler type (Cobol-66? Cobol-74? Cobol-85) and vendor (IBM? Microfocus? Fujitsu? Also, what is the problem domain? Accounting? Web serving? Inventory control? And what is your new target platform and language? – Joe Zitzelberger Jan 12 '11 at 14:11
  • The cost to convert a line of COBOL has to take into account all that stuff you don't want to describe, because they affect the result. – Ira Baxter Jan 23 '11 at 19:08
  • 1
    Regarding NACA, you should read my discussion of this at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1029974/experience-migrating-legacy-cobol-pl1-to-java/1061829#1061829 You should read the rest of that thread for other opinions than mine. – Ira Baxter Jan 24 '11 at 13:59
  • 2
    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is asking about market prices, not programming. – TylerH Jul 27 '15 at 15:47
  • I will happily do it for $85/hour as long as it is from my house and I can wear my bunny slippers and have my own coffee machine to fuel me... – Joe Zitzelberger Sep 09 '15 at 05:11

1 Answers1

3

I imagine it would be very difficult to accurately cost a conversion of this nature. Apart from the code, and understanding the business processes, you would also have to factor in changes for the new environment, running batch programs, print spooling, etc.

Instead of converting, have you checked out the possibility of changing the COBOL environment, i.e. running under .NET or JVM.

And COBOL is a modern language :-)

colemanj
  • 489
  • 2
  • 2
  • 1
    I know this is a very difficult question. But getting for example an interval (i.e. 10 cents to 1$ per line of code or maybe it should be 1000$ to 10000$ (I have no idea)) would be a lot better than not having an interval. – David Jan 12 '11 at 08:44