'Spaghetti code' hampers system

By Mark Watson
Contact
December 6, 2003

Cook Systems has partnered with a company to turn old, hard-to-digest "spaghetti code" into something that even the newest computer can absorb without a hiccup.

Memphis-based Cook Systems and Cary, N.C.-based BluePhoenix Solutions are offering COBOL Regeneration software systems.

COBOL, an acronym for Common Business Oriented Language, is a decades-old software system popular for business applications.

It is frequently used in mainframe computers for government agencies and financial institutions.

Over time, computer users often cut and splice together parts of COBOL code in a computer without a system and without recording those changes.

This creates what Jim Fletcher, Cook Systems chief executive, called "spaghetti code."

Dr. Brian D. Janz, a University of Memphis management information systems professor and associate director of the FedEx Center for Supply Chain Management, said most large organizations face problems with "cross-system integration - finding ways to get these legacy systems to work better together and with more recently developed applications."

"The need for regenerating old COBOL and creating documentation for it can be a real strategic issue for companies," he said.

"Spaghetti code" also makes maintaining a system harder, and maintenance typically makes up 60 to 80 percent of an enterprise's annual information technology spending, said Bill Daniel, managing director of Cook Systems' Legacy Modernization Group.

"Companies have been looking at ways to migrate, modernize or replace their mainframe (software) applications," Daniel said. "What we decided to do is spend a considerable amount of money and 18 months to come up with a solution to reduce the overall maintenance expense in the COBOL area of IT."

The result is COBOL Regeneration, which uses tools from BluePhoenix to separate out particular meaningful bits of code, known as business rules.

These may include items such as what decimal place to round off an interest rate, or whether an inventory is counted first-in, first-out, or last-in, first-out.

COBOL Regeneration then cleans up the code, scanning for bugs and missing bits, and delivers it in a more industry standard language, Daniel said.

"The key is that it enables you to cut maintenance costs by 33 to 50 percent," Daniel said.

A company may employ two people to maintain a typical COBOL program with 250,000 lines of code, but COBOL Regeneration would allow that company to turn one of those programmers to more productive activity, Fletcher said.

"There's a lot of money to be saved, largely in maintenance," Fletcher said. "We're very, very excited about this. Every state government and many insurance companies are in a situation with huge, undocumented COBOL applications that need this."

One state government that may see a need for this is Kentucky, which recently named Cook Systems as one of six providers of system development services.

This was a win over much bigger competitors, such as Germantown-based SCB Computer Technology. Kentucky estimated the value of the contract at about $26 million a year, Fletcher said.

"When you get a contract with a state government, you are just getting a hunting license," he said. "I'm just bullish enough to believe that Cook should get in the 25- to-50 percent range of the business that is available. We're very good at what we do, and traditionally, that's the kind of performance that we have."

As an old computer language, COBOL doesn't get as many new programmers as does Java, and the average COBOL programmer is 53 years old, Fletcher said.

"People are retiring, and a lot of knowledge is going out the door with them when they leave," Daniel said.

This makes the use of systems such as COBOL Regeneration that much more valuable.

"I'm not sure that any particular company has a monopoly on the knowledge needed to do a good job of the transition from COBOL to more modern languages," said Bob Palmer, president of Memphis's Data Guidance Group, said. "Cook certainly has a track record in this area."

- Mark Watson: 529-5874