REPORTS FROM SENIOR IT MANAGERS ON STRATEGIC PROJECTS


BIT REPORT
Reported by Elizabeth U. Harding

The information technology group of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, headquartered at Lake Union Conference, Berrien Springs, Mich., wanted to preserve their 20-year investment in existing Cobol code. According to Harvey Kilsby, the church's IT director, the IT group is working on converting from a PC Cobol character interface to a Futjitsu graphical user interface (GUI).

Cobol is still a viable option in the 21st century, according to Kilsby. Besides preserving investment in legacy code, he maintains there are a few major advantages in using Cobol: First, the language was designed for business use, and second, Cobol has international standards unlike other languages such as Java, for instance, which is controlled by Sun.

"We found no difference between Cobol and Fujitsu," says Kilsby. "Virtually everybody who offers Cobol development tools sticks to the standard. When tool developers put in enhancements, you can always avoid using them."

The only challenge switching to Fujitsu Cobol was figuring out the Fujitsu documentation, according to Kilsby.

One of the reasons Kilsby says he opted for Fujitsu over other similar products was distribution. "The fact that Fujitsu has no run-time license fee for distribution made a significant difference. We have over 2,500 sites that range in size from a single user to 30 to 40 people doing multiple-user entry."