Semiautomatic Translation of COBOL into HIBOL.

Abstract

A severe software crisis is currently being experienced by the data processing community due to intolerable maintenance costs. A system is introduced to reduce those costs by the translation of existing COBOL software into HIBOL; a very high level language that is significantly easier to maintain. HIBOL, uses a single type of data object, called a flow, which is an indexed stream of data values. Computation is expressed as operations acting on flows. The translation process relies on a method for program abstraction developed by Richard Waters which expresses programs as a hierarchical structure, called an analyzed plan, in which control and data flow is made explicit. In this formalism, loops are expressed as a composition of stream operators acting on stream data flow. This paper discusses in detail how an analyzed plan for a COBOL program can be transmitted into a HIBOL program. It is currently possible to translated into HIBOL analyzed plans for a relatively small (but well defined) subset of COBOL programs. Suggestions are made as to how that subset could be expanded through further research. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 1981
Accession Number
ADA099253

Entities

People

  • Gregory Gerard Faust

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Automatic
  • Automatic Programming
  • Computations
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Data Processing
  • Data Sets
  • Debugging
  • Engineering
  • High Level Languages
  • Language
  • Maintenance
  • Military Research
  • Programming Languages
  • Translations

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Mathematical Modeling and Probability Theory.
  • Software Engineering.
  • Systems Analysis and Design