Cobol Coding

[Octavis Uberstine]

ARMONKN.Y., Aug. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced watsonx Code Assistant for Z, a new generative AI-assisted product that will help enable faster translation of COBOL to Java and enhances developer productivity on the platform. This product will be generally available in Q4 2023, and is being designed to help accelerate COBOL application modernization. Watsonx Code Assistant for Z will preview during TechXchange, IBM's premier technical learning event in Las Vegas, Sept 11-13.

Watsonx Code Assistant for Z is a new addition to the watsonx Code Assistant product family, along with IBM watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed, scheduled for release later this year. These solutions will be powered by IBM's watsonx.ai code model, which will have knowledge of 115 coding languages1 having learned from 1.5 trillion tokens.2 At 20 billion parameters, it is on target to become one of the largest generative AI foundation models for code automation.3 The watsonx Code Assistant product portfolio will extend over time to address other programming languages, to improve time to value for modernization and address growing skills challenges for developers.

IBM is designing these capabilities to provide tooling for each step of the modernization journey. The solution is expected to include IBM's Application Discovery and Delivery Intelligence (ADDI) inventory and analysis tool. Following ADDI, key steps on the journey include refactoring business services in COBOL, transforming COBOL code to Java code with an optimized design, and validating the resulting outcome, including using automated testing capabilities. Potential benefits for clients include:

"Our collaboration with IBM is an important element in our drive to leverage generative AI interfaces to challenge legacy approaches with material productivity gains, and reinvent our Capital Markets solutions," said Roger Burkhardt, CTO, Capital Markets and AI, Broadridge Financial. "We have had excellent client response to our generative AI investments and we are intrigued by the opportunity to further our efforts by leveraging IBM watsonx Code Assistant for Z to address a broader range of platforms."

According to new research from the IBM Institute for Business Value, organizations are 12x more likely to leverage existing mainframe assets rather than rebuild their application estates from scratch in the next two years. At the same time, however, the study shows that the number one challenge for those same organizations is a lack of resources and skills.

"By bringing generative AI capabilities through watsonx to new use cases, we plan to drive real progress for our clients," said Kareem Yusuf, PhD, Senior Vice President, Product Management and Growth, IBM Software. "IBM is engineering watsonx Code Assistant for Z to take a targeted and optimized approach. It's built to rapidly and accurately convert code optimized for IBM Z, accelerate time to market and broaden the skills pool. This can help enhance applications and add new capabilities while preserving the performance, resiliency, and security inherent in IBM Z."

There are many application modernization approaches available today. Some options include rewriting all application code in Java, or migrating everything to public cloud, which may sacrifice capabilities that are core to the IBM Z value proposition while failing to deliver on expected cost reduction. Tools that convert COBOL applications to Java syntax can produce code that is hard to maintain and can be unrecognizable to a Java developer. Generative AI is promising, but current AI-assisted partial re-write technology lacks COBOL support and doesn't optimize the resulting Java code for the given task.

The resulting Java code from watsonx Code Assistant for Z will be object-oriented. IBM is designing this solution to be optimized to interoperate with the rest of the COBOL application, with CICS, IMS, DB2, and other z/OS runtimes. Java on Z is designed to be performance-optimized versus a compared x86 platform.4

According to a 2023 Gartner report (For Gartner Subscribers only), "by 2028, the combination of humans and AI assistants working in tandem could reduce the time to complete coding tasks by 30%." The report further states that "the use of AI code generation tools is not replacing the quality assurance (QA) processes and security controls that are needed by developers for robust and secure product development, as well as for mitigation of inherited risks from using generative methods for code."5

Protecting sensitive data and customer intellectual property are critical when it comes to implementing generative AI. IBM for decades has followed core principles, grounded in commitments to Trust and Transparency. With this principle-based approach, the watsonx platform aims to enable enterprises to leverage their own trusted data and IP to build tailored AI solutions that are scalable across operations.

Additionally, IBM Consulting brings deep domain expertise in IBM Z application modernization with a focus on guiding clients that leverage the platform across key industries such as banking, insurance, healthcare and government. These dedicated consultants can help clients identify the right application areas to modernize in order to optimize the potential benefits of watsonx Code Assistant for Z.

For more information about AI-assisted mainframe application modernization, and to get started with IBM's optimized, targeted approach, please visit our website here and join us at TechXchange. Register today for our watsonx Code Assistant for Z webinar on Sept. 21 at 11 am ET here and learn how IBM is bringing Gen AI to mainframe application modernization. You can also schedule a live demo with our team here.

IBM's plans, directions, and intentions may change or be withdrawn at any time at IBM's discretion without notice. Information about potential future products and improvements is provided to give a general idea of IBM's goals and objectives and should not be used in making a purchase decision. IBM is not obligated to provide any material, code, or functionality based on this information.

5 Gartner, Emerging Tech: Generative AI Code Assistants Are Becoming Essential to Developer Experience, By Radu Miclaus, Arun Chandrasekaran, Ray Valdes, Mark Driver, Eric Goodness, Published 11 May 2023

About IBM

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. More than 4,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

COBOL was originally developed in 1959, according to the National Museum of American History, and built many of the mainframe systems throughout the following decades. Recently, though, it has fallen out of favor with coders, creating a huge vacuum of people with COBOL skills even as the need for those skills grows.

St. Thomas in fall of 2019 launched a graduate certificate in enterprise computing in an effort to begin meeting the huge oncoming need as an aging workforce of COBOL coders moves into retirement. School of Engineering Associate Dean of Graduate Programs Bhabani Misra estimated 60-70% of all computing power is in mainframe computers built on COBOL programming. A 2017 report by Reuters found that there are still 220 billion lines of COBOL in use today. 43% of banking systems are built on COBOL and 95% percent of ATM swipes rely on COBOL code.

We caught up with Misra to ask him about this COBOL shortage, how St. Thomas is trying to help address it and his prediction that someone who gets into the COBOL coding field will rise to the top very quickly.

People do not realize that almost 60-70% of computing programs are in mainframe computers. All financing industry, health care industry. You go to Target, the computer behind the scenes doing everything; same thing across health care, all industries. IBM was the pioneer of mainframe computing, and everything is still happening there.

We do standard COBOL programming with SQL and also HOGAN COBOL programming. We are editing Java in local source files but would like to use SonarLint to do the same with COBOL, we also are using the Zowe Explorer and the IBM Z Open Editor extension to connect to our mainframe source libraries so if these could all be integrated together that would be better.

Hello @Yves_Michon and welcome to the SonarSource community.

Thanks to @Yves_Michon and @GregHep for sharing your needs; do you have an idea how many developers in your companies are migrating to VSCode for COBOL development?

We have connected the SonarLint extension for VS Code with SonarQube. This escalates faults detected in a previous Sonar analysis, but it does not do real-time checking while coding.

We would like the developer to be informed of faults as soon as possible, while coding in VS Code, (we use IBM Z Open Editor extension for VS Code).

I currently have 6 internal programmers and about 25 external working for a partner company all with this requirement. Cobol code is all PC based, and managed under TFS for the moment, but moving to git soon to come. We have been mandated by the powers above to make pre-compile linting a constant in all of the development environments before the end of the year, as a step of RIRD. COBOL has had a late starter however.

Older version of MFCOBOL for Windows. While I have no issues adapting the rules, or adding new ones, I would never the less like to avoid breaking out my perl skills to create an alternate solution.

Code management in Visual Studio,

Development IDE = VSCODE

Source files and copy members are in a LAN directories.

They are checked into our individual LAN workspaces as needed.

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