Metrixware unveils the Cobos Projet, the Open Source alternative to commercial Mainframe solutions

April 9, 2009 - PRLog -- Metrixware, editor of software solutions dedicated to regaining knowledge, to managing and valorising application assets, unveils  the  Cobos Project, an Open Source initiative dedicated to Cobol Mainframe applications under Eclipse, a real alternative to existing Mainframe commercial solutions.


Ergonomics and productivity in Cobol development

Initiated by Metrixware, Cobos is an Open Source project backed by its customers, particularly those in the insurance sector, and is available for free download. The lack of a price tag is in no way a reflection of the intrinsic qualities both of its technical architecture (Ingres data model) and its development interface.
      
Integrated with Eclipse, and its sophisticated ergonomic graphical environment, and user-friendly to Cobol developers (especially the youngest, not always enthusiastic about the language despite its robustness and reliability and still growing use).

As in certain commercial Mainframe solutions found in the market, but often at a dissuasive price, Cobos enables developers to work locally: the required source files are downloaded on Eclipse then reloaded on the mainframe following the intervention of the developer, who can work totally autonomously on an economical workstation.


Mainframes, a sizable economical challenge for IT management
      
Today, according to the Gartner Group, 70% to 80% of in-house applications worldwide are written in Cobol. Representing, according to the estimation of eWeek, about 200 billion lines of Cobol, increased every year by about 5 billion lines produced by around two million active Cobol programmers.

A large and ongoing market that can count on only two solutions today: the mainframe terminal not user-friendly and very demanding on mainframe resources; and commercial mainframe solutions, more ergonomic thanks to their graphical interface and less demanding on mainframe resources but with a prohibitive cost in license fees.

Open source and integrated into the Eclipse development environment, Cobos combines economy and ease of use, whilst considerably reducing, by providing a local working environment, the cost of mainframe resources required to build applications.

   

A community project, with complementary tools and services
      
Built on a freeware model, the Cobos project makes its source code available to users, who can adapt it to meet their own requirements. Any adaptations, changes and enhancements they make can be proposed to Metrixware to be integrated, if judged pertinent by Metrixware for the majority of users, to the standard project.

      
In addition, Metrixware proposes to accompany Cobos with its own feature development and specific support services, as well as its plug-in: Cobol SC for Eclipse, designed to analyze the conformance and quality of developments, and be directly integrated into the developers workstation for a continual control from the earliest point and throughout the life-cycle of the tool.
   


The Cobos project, in brief

Derived from the IDE Cobol project, Cobos proposes the use of the Eclipse environment to develop Cobol applications locally, with a communication interface based on SSH, (applications for host connection, connection information configuration, automatic connection/disconnection, remote execution of commands, file transfer), limiting to the strict minimum the exchanges with the operational platform. Natively, Cobos integrates a local compiler, inspired by the OpenCobol project, to which Metrixware has added object generation under Windows with Visual Studio, CICS and DB2 support as well as the expansion of the Cobol Copy clauses.



Price & availability

-The Cobos project is available for free downloading from 15 April 2009.
-For Metrixware associated services and products: please contact us.


Inscription for a press web-seminar presenting Cobos

-Telephone : +33 1 55 69 32 24
-Internet : http://www.metrixware.com/FR/event.php?event_id=10
-E-mail : event@metrixware.com




Contact

Zineb AMRANI | METRIXWARE
Operational Marketing
zineb.amrani@metrixware.com
Tél : +33 1 55 69 32 20

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About Metrixware

Software solution editor dedicated to regaining knowledge, managing and optimizing application assets, Metrixware is present in the Application Asset Management and IT Governance markets since 1995.

Through its products and services, Metrixware replies to the challenges confronting IT managers concerning the optimum management of their IT assets in a context of IT modernization (TPM, migration, process optimization, maintenance, etc). The corner-stone of our offer, System Code is an Application Portfolio Management (APM) solution enabling IT managers to have a rich vision of the state of their application assets, allowing them to make informed management decisions.

Metrixware includes a number of companies in the banking sector (BNP Paribas, Société Générale, LCL, Caisse d'Épargne), in insurance (CNP Assurances, Generali), the public sector (Ministère de l'Écologie, EDF) and telecommunication services (Logica, Orange).