Is COBOL-8x cost effective?

  • Authors:

  • Marco Fiorello;John Cugini

  • Affiliations:

  • Titan Systems, Vienna, Virginia;National Bureau of Standards, Washington, D.C.

  • Venue:
  • AFIPS '84 Proceedings of the July 9-12, 1984, national computer conference and exposition
  • Year:
  • 1984

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Abstract

The purpose of the study is to assess the estimated costs and benefits to the federal government that would result from adoption of the proposed revision of American National Standard COBOL as a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS). Potential benefits of $90.2 million have been identified, stemming primarily from improved productivity in both the development and maintenance of COBOL programs. Estimated costs of $17.9 million have been identified, arising principally from the effort needed to convert old COBOL programs to the new specification, which is incompatible in some respects with the current one. In support of the study, we conducted interviews with federal ADP managers and officials, and also analyzed more than one thousand federal COBOL programs for various syntactic characteristics.