From Relic to Relevance: COBOL’s 88-Level Fields for Modern Coders

Luke Zeisset COBOL, Modernization, Programming, Tutorial Leave a Comment

Remember when blockchain was going to change everything? Now AI is the trend dominating every conversationโ€”but some of the most effective programming ideas have been around for decades. This post examines one of COBOLโ€™s lesser-known yet highly practical features: the 88-level field. Far more than a simple boolean, 88-level fields provide a clear, maintainable way to describe data conditions, enforce business rules, and streamline initialization. Through real-world examples, youโ€™ll see how this feature can reduce complexity, eliminate hard-coded values, and make logic more expressiveโ€”demonstrating that sometimes proven tools from โ€œoldโ€ languages still have lessons worth applying today.

Cobol Modernization with Spring Batch Header Image of Mainframe Racks

White Paper: COBOL Modernization Strategy with Spring Batch

Keyhole Software Articles, COBOL, Development Technologies & Tools, Java, Modernization, Spring Batch Leave a Comment

The Keyhole team is proud to announce the publishing of a new, free white paper: COBOL Modernization Strategy with Spring Batch

This strategy positions Spring Batch as an irresistible proposition for organizations ready to bid farewell to their COBOL legacy. Keyhole Software offers guiding principles for COBOL modernization, with a comprehensive guide based on tangible experience for enterprises navigating the realm of COBOL modernization.ย 

COBOL: The Language that Won't Die

COBOL: The Language That Won’t Die

Kevin Roper Articles, COBOL 1 Comment

This post contains an introduction to and demo of the mythical language that every programmer seems to know about but doesnโ€™t really know: COBOL.

By learning about COBOL, you learn about basic concepts in computing in general, and how all of these languages are really doing a lot of the same activities underneath.

-Everything old is new again – Stephen King, The Colorado Kid

Cobol to Java

Adventures In Modernization: Strategy + Example Converting COBOL To Java

Dallas Monson Articles, COBOL, Consulting, Development Technologies & Tools, DevOps, Java, Keyhole Creations, Modernization, Programming, Tutorial Leave a Comment

We have consultants who specialize in moving old to new, renovating dilapidated code bases, and designing brighter futures for enterprises who have been vendor-locked for most of their existence. We have come across some repeated patterns and strategies for how to approach modernization of legacy systems. In this blog, we will cover a strategy that is very popular right now, Re-Platforming.

The basic flow of this post will be:

Introduction to Modernization
High-level definition of the Re-Platforming Strategy for Modernization
Sample of Re-Platforming using Keyhole Syntax Tree Transformer, COBOL –> Java
Additional thoughts on the value/risk of this strategy

Let’s get started…

Introducing Spring Batch, Part One

Jonny Hackett Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, Intro to Spring Batch Series, Java, Spring, Spring Batch, Tutorial 12 Comments

Attention: The following article was published over 13 years ago, and the information provided may be aged or outdated. Please keep that in mind as you read the post.Have you ever heard someone say โ€œMan I wish we had a toy like that when I was a kid! That would have been awesome!โ€ For me, thatโ€™s usually when Iโ€™m wrapping …