Lessons Learned: Moving from

Net Express to Visual COBOLMay 28, 2020

Brought to You By

Vivit’s COBOL Special Interest Group (SIG)

Jerome Rose

Business Systems Analyst

Infosys

Vivit COBOL SIG Leader

Moderated By

Graham Bartholomae

Senior Software Developer

PolySystems, Inc.

Today’s Speakers

Jerome RoseBusiness Systems Analyst

Infosys

Blair McDonaldPrincipal Support Engineer

Micro Focus

House Keeping

• This “LIVE” session is being recorded

Recordings are available to all Vivit members

• Session Q&A:

Please type questions in the Questions Pane

Webinar Control Panel

Toggle View Window

between Full

screen/window mode.

Questions

Introduction

• Hello, I’m Jerome Rose, the Special Interest Group Leader from the

Chicago area for COBOL

• I am with Infosys. I recently I completed a large Infrastructure

Upgrade Project where I supported the MF COBOL part of it, I will

be talking about some of the challenges we encountered and the

solutions that we came up with

• Today we will be joined by Blair McDonald, a Micro Focus COBOL

Technical Expert

The Upgrade

• Unix Linux, Red Hat Distro

• MF Net Express Visual COBOL

• Java Java 1.8

• Appworx Scheduling Manager Newest version

• Fileshares (Storage) NAS (Net Attached Storage)

Why Upgrade from Unix to Linux?

• Open Sourced – more community support, faster updates

• Designed as a general-purpose scalable platform for a broad set

of applications

• Your choice of Distributions

• Supports almost all file systems used across operating systems

• Preferred OS for cloud deployment and data centers primarily for

economic reasons

Advantages of LINUX

Why Upgrade from Net Express to

Visual COBOL?

• Object Orientation

• Use of API’s

• Access to the .NET and JAVA Frameworks

Advantages of Visual COBOL

The PLAN - Linux is Unix & Unix is Linux

• Unix is Linux – What could possibly go wrong?

• The Upgrade was strictly Lift and Shift – carrying over all MF COBOL source

code modules intact, without any new functionality, no data/database

changes, and with DBA assurances that all database connections are as

they should be

• Regression testing the COBOL programs in each region (Unix), and then

testing the same applications in each stage in Linux

The Result - SUCCESS!!

• The obstacles encountered in the conversion from Unix to Linux and Net

Express to Visual COBOL were solved by either changing a script, an

environment variable, the scheduler or the COBOL program

• Applications are now executing 834 Visual COBOL source code modules

in Linux, thru the new version of the Appworx Scheduling Manager,

writing to the NAS

• Of the 834 programs, 15 of them suffered from performance degradation,

i.e. running 50% slower in Linux than in Unix

I. Challenge

Resolution– Terminate the string with low-values prior to issuing the “Call

System” command in the code, which invokes the Linux

Script

– Move low-values to ws-string-var String ‘xxxxxxxxx’ Call

System

COBOL program executes but does not produce output

(not executing the Linux Script)

II. Challenge

Resolution– Issue the ‘e’ ECHO command in the code to enable the

print line break

– Do not update the bash_profile, it will have negative

implications for other processes

Files sent to the printer are not being printed

III. Challenge

Resolution

– Missing Data: Data entered on a screen in Appworx

(Application Manager), was not being recognized, i.e.

truncated, the timestamp portion of the date/timestamp

was being cut off

– Resolution: Modify the script (SOCOBOLMFDYNAM), to

change the file processing from AWK (used in Unix) to SED –Stream Editor, which worked in Linux

Issue Online data not being recognized

IV. Challenge

Resolution

– This was not related to Linux or MF COBOL, the file was

corrupted

– Deleting and recreating the file provided the solution

COBOL Program cannot write to a file; it was issuing a

write and aborting immediately

COBOL Performance Management – Best

Practices

• Create a Backup Plan for when your results are not as intended

• Notify your infrastructure personnel and DBA that they will need to get involved

• Do not attempt to modify the Linux kernel

• Do not Nice or Renice the Linux values to try to change the priority of the job’s execution

COBOL Performance Management -

CPU, Memory, Disk I-O, Network

• CPU - no changes, (higher or lower) caused any improvement in

execution time

• Memory - a slight increase caused a slight improvement, however

additional increases in Memory did not result in any

improvements

• Disk I-O - Top and Stat commands showed excellent performance

• Network - TCPDUMP showed that the packets transmission was

operating without fault

• Anti-Virus – Unix had none, Linux had Sophos – removing it

caused a reduction in Exec time of 10%

COBOL Performance Management-

Employing Linux Diagnostic Tools

• STRACE – the summary showed WAIT4 errors

• Using the –p option to trace Child processes was

inconclusive- Many false errors were reported

• TCPDUMP was executed to create .PCAP files which were

then viewed in Wireshark

Micro Focus COBOL Performance

Management Tool - ‘Profiler’

Profiler – A Micro Focus compiler directive that will create a report showing how much percentage of time that a program spends in each COBOL routine.

•

• Profile MF directive as the first line in the source code ($SET PROFILE as the

first line of code in your program), creates an .IPF file that you convert by

executing PROFILER

• Profiler revealed that each individual routine in the program was taking longer

in Linux – again inconclusive

COBOL Performance Management -

CTF Trace - Consolidated Trace Facility from Micro Focus

Create the ctf directory

• To activate: SET the following variables

• Create the ctf.cfg file based on a template (see Micro Focus documentation)

• export MFTRACE_CONFIG=$PWD/ctf.cfg

• export MFTRACE_LOGS=$PWD/ctftrace,where MFTRACE_CONFIG references the ctf.cfg file and MFTRACE_LOGS is the destination folder for the trace files

• And then run the application

• It doesn’t matter where the ctf.cfg file resides as long as the variable MFTRACE_CONFIG references the correct location

• Alternatively you could SET the variables in the bash_profile, (less preferred due to excess tracing)

Set the export values, and run the application

Micro Focus CTF – Consolidated Trace

FacilityRecent Micro Focus Enhancements: Visual COBOL 5.0 for Eclipse Distributed Edition

Release Notes

• Availability of CTF from the Eclipse interface - a new property tab, CTF, in the Eclipse launch

configuration dialog box helps to enable CTF tracing and specify a CTF configuration file. By

default, the trace files are then saved in a Logs subfolder within the project's folder.

• Dynamic CTF - it is now possible to configure the CTF dynamically from outside the process

being traced. This feature is only currently available on Windows platforms.

• Using a new command line utility - cblctd - you can alter the tracing events of running

applications that already have CTF tracing enabled. You can alter trace levels, add or remove

components to or from the trace, and also configure the emitters in effect.

• Additionally, there is also a new component that you can trace - mf.mfdbfh - enables you to

trace activity of the Micro Focus Native Database File Handler.

COBOL Performance Management -

Running Micro Focus Enterprise Server

• Directory where the Enterprise Server ES regions system would reside:

var/mfcobol/es

• The HSF trace csv file from the ES regions system directory will show the

transaction response times and where the time is spent.

Question & Answer Session

For Reference

• Jerome Rose: jeromeq42@yahoo.com

• Blair McDonald: Blair.McDonald@microfocus.com

• Knowledge Base Article describing a way (on Unix/Linux platforms) to determine whether a command invoked by CALL “SYSTEM” was successful, based on the return code from the invoked command: https://community.microfocus.com/t5/Net-Express-Server-Express/Invoke-a-UNIX-command-from-within-COBOL-using-CALL-quot-SYSTEM/ta-p/1746705

• Upcoming Micro Focus Webinar: Visual COBOL 6.0 Launch

New Modernization solutions for your Micro Focus COBOL applications

24 June 2020, 8 am PDT, 3 PM GMTRegister Now

In an ever-changing IT world with new pressure to digitize corporate IT, developers need new ways of understanding and modernizing established COBOL systems. Visual COBOL 6.0 introduces new code slicing capabilities enabling developers to visually extract, refactor and build re-usable COBOL APIs for rapid deployment across the enterprise.

This latest release also features new container orchestration support using Docker and Kubernetes to intelligently manage your COBOL applications within a container architecture.

Upcoming Vivit Events

Thank you

• Complete the short survey so your Vivit leaders can better

serve you in the future

https://www.vivit-worldwide.org/

Thank You