Fujitsu Ltd is developing a Cobol cartridge to be bundled for use with Oracle Corp’s Web Application Server. Oracle says it intends to use the new add-on alongside a trial-use version of Fujitsu’s Cobol compiler, and will ship both with the server beginning with the next release. The cartridge is made up of a set of Cobol application programming interfaces which enable users to access the Oracle Application Server functions from within Cobol programs. Thin Hyper Text Markup Language based clients such as web browsers can also be used to execute Cobol applications. Fujitsu says the new cartridge will enable programmers to deploy COBOL applications in new environments and reuse legacy applications, which it claims will lower the cost of application maintenance and development. Oracle’s Web Application Server also runs Java, C and C++, PL/SQL and the VRML virtual reality markup language. The Cobol cartridge is initially set for release on Windows NT, Sun Solaris, HP-UX and Fujitsu UXP/DS.
