Software engineering for the Cobol environment

Abstract

In a attempt to improve the productivity of their 70 development staff, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken has built an integrated set of manual and automatic tools for the implementation of Cobol programs. It was possible to use a number of modern programming techniques, including software engineering methods, in a Cobol environment. The project required 31 person-months; the aims, current status, and initial results are reported.

References

1. 1 Applied Data Research. COBOL/QDM utility procedures guide. Form no. SM2G- 07-00, Applied Data Research, Princeton N.J., 1979. Describes the MetaCobol package for quality control of Cobol programs. This package includes standards checking, flagging of inefficient code and tidying the Data Division.
2. 2 Applied Data Research. MetaCOBOL user guide. Form no. SM2G-00-10, Applied Data Research, Princeton N.J., 1979. A general description of the functions provided by the MetaCobol macro translator.
3. 3 Applied Data Research. Toward COBOL structured programming. Form no. SM IG-51-00, Applied Data Research, Princeton N.J., 1976. A summary of the design principles behind the MetaCobol structured programming package and an overview of the Cobol extensions which it supports.
4. 4 Bjergis, L. MetaCOBOL Interface to a data dictionary. Spadab, Stockholm, Sweden, 1982.The description of a two-way interface between MetaCobol and Datamanager, implemented as MetaCobol macros plus an exit routine. The interface may be used to D fetch data item definitions from the dictionary at compile time and 2) update the dictionary with information from the Cobol source code.
5. 5 Capex. "Optimizer III OS user guide." Form no. SO3-1279-310. Capex Corp., Phoenix, Ariz. 1980. The product description consists of three parts: 1) compile time actions including static control flow analysis, 2) test monitoring and 3) test run analysis including path coverage.
6. 6 Fagan, M. Design and code inspections to reduce errors in program development. IBM Syst. J. 15, 3 (1976), 182-211. The code inspection technique as applied to application systems development is described. Specific check lists for inspections and examples of the use of inspection results to improve future work are included.
7. 7 Fosdick, H. Opting for PL/1. Computerworm 14, 32 (Aug. 1 l, 1980), 27-30. The relative strengths and weaknesses of PL/I and Cobol as languages for the development of administrative programs are discussed.
8. 8 Glass, R. Real time: The 'lost world' of software debugging and testing. Comm. ACM 23, 5 (May 1980), 264-271. A survey of tools and techniques for testing real time programs including conclusions about how effective the tools are for finding errors.
9. 9 Howden, W. Contemporary software development environments. Comm. ACM 25, 5 (May 1982), 318-329. Examines the differences between software development environments depending on investment, Functions which should be present in more advanced environments are defined.
10. 10 IBM. Batch terminal simulator II program description, operation manual. Form no. SH20-1844, IBM, Palo Alto, Calif., 1979. A description of the data base simulator used to test Information Management System (IMS) programs.
11. 11 IBM. COBOL compiler and library programmers guide. Form no. SC28-6483, IBM, San Jose, Calif., 1979. A complete description of the optional processing available in IBM's Cobol compiler, together with a guide to the various compiler reports.
12. 12 IBM. COBOL interactive debug terminal user's guide and reference. Form no. SC28- 6465, IBM, San Jose, Calif., 1975. Lists the facilities present in the interactive debugging monitor for IBM Cobol and describes how these are used.
13. 13 IBM. System productivity facility dialog management services. Form no. SC34-2036, IBM, San Jose, Calif., 1980. Shows how standard functions for handling CRT panels, menus and tables may be used to provide a customized programming development user interface.
14. 14 Jackson, M. Principles of program design. Academic Press, New York, 1975, Chap. 4. A detailed description of the Jackson Structured Programming technique which uses the input and output data structures to derive the program structure. The technique is widely used in Europe for developing administrative programs.
15. 15 Kernigham, B., and Plauger, P. Software Tools. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1976, pp. 35-66. Shows how tools for program development may be built by combining a limited number of basic building blocks. One class of such building blocks is the file tailoring filter.
16. 16 Magee, P. Call statements are harmful but can be controlled. ACM SIGPLAN Notices 16, 2 (Feb. 1981), 83-88. Explains how interfacing errors in Cobol may be detected earlier in the development cycle by using a preprocessor which recognizes the interface as a Cobol-like verb, instead of using a standard Cobol CALL statement with a number of unverified parameters.
17. 17 Management Systems and Programming. Datamanager Fact Book. MSP, London, England, 1979. A general description of the data dictionary functions which are in the Datamanager product.
18. 18 Martin, J. Application Development without Programmers. Savant Institute, Carnforth, England, 1980. Presents the results, ineluding productivity figures, of projects which allowed end users to develop their systems using application generators and very high level languages.
19. 19 Miner, J. Software tools: S-1 compare. Pascal News 13 (June 1978), 20-23. The Pascal source code of a program which lists the differences between two files, taking account of inserted or deleted records.
20. 20 Weinberg, G., Wright, S., Kauffman, R., and Goetz, M. High Level COBOL Programming. Winthrop, Cambridge, Mass., 1977. A discussion of the technical and business aspects of Cobol programming, resulting in suggestions to extend the Cobol language in order to ease program development. These extension could easily be implemented using a preprocessor.

Index Terms

• Software and its engineering

  • Software notations and tools

    • Development frameworks and environments