Denver, Colorado-based Unidata Inc is now offering production versions of its Cobol Direct/Connect migration technology for getting Cobol application data structures into its Pick-derived nested or multidimensional UniData relational database. The technology is a key component of UniData’s march to embrace Cobol users, and their wallets, with versions of its database tailored for getting legacy code into relational structures (CI No 2,430). A first pass a Direct/Connect was heavily touted at that time but it never actually shipped in production quantities. UniData hired itself Cobol experts and they have been enhancing and refining the migration tool over the last 12 months. Cobol code has to be re-written for other relational databases such as Oracle and Sybase, which cannot accommodate Cobol’s multidimensional aspects, such as the occurs statements. Direct/Connect will ship from around ú2,000 upwards.
