Language Conversion Tour :: PL/I

Successful, Maintainable, Fixed-Cost PL/I Conversions

Due to the limited number of existing PL/I vendors, the level of support given to existing PL/I products, and the decreasing number of PL/I developers, businesses are becoming concerned by the increasing exposure to risk by being dependent upon PL/I-based applications. The challenge for these companies is how to transition away from PL/I while retaining the tremendous investment they have made in their PL/I applications.

To help companies like your’s make the transition, Datatek has developed a sophisticated tool-set and a highly customizable process for the automated conversion of PL/I to modern and more accessible languages such as C, C++, COBOL, C#, Java, etc.

Datatek Dramatically Reduces
Your Cost, Risk & Pain

Datatek achieves over 99% automation. This high rate of automation translates in to quicker code turn around and a dramatically reduced work load for you staff.
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Datatek converts 100% of your code. For this particular project, 99.58% of the customer’s PL/I was converted by the automated converter and 0.42% manually. You will never receive partially converted code.

Discover why a high percentage of automation makes a real difference to you »

See the Datatek Difference!

 

Datatek Effectively Uses Automation to Reduce Your Cost, Risk & Pain

One of the primary advantages of automation is its ability to increase the speed and accuracy of a project by reducing the amount of manual conversion and qualification that needs to be done. Manual effort is by its very nature much more inconsistent and error prone than automation. Because some automated services and solutions only claim to be able to achieve 80-90% automation, they are not able to offer their clients the full benefits that Datatek can.

Reducing the manual effort through a high level of automation has a number of benefits:

  • Testing and qualification time is reduced for each code merge.
  • Reduction of QA effort frees you and your staff to work on other projects.
  • Datatek can allow the customer to experiment with various solutions and see their effect and implication across the entire code base.
 
 

Datatek Customizes its Converter for Each and Every Client

Because we know from experience that no two applications are the same, Datatek customizes its converter for each and every client. We understand that your business has spent years developing and customizing your applications to address your company’s specific needs and processes. And because we understand how important this is to the success of the project, we customize our tools from top to bottom so that we can return converted code to you that is both accurate and maintainable.

“Generic” solutions can produce poor code which lacks a standard of maintainability. We have found that customers are much more satisfied receiving code in the form they want it in as opposed to being forced to take code in whatever form a generic solution provides it in.

 
 

Datatek Takes Responsibility to Ensure Your Success!

Migrations are difficult, they are inherently risky, and they require strong partnerships. It isn’t enough for a migration partner to just convert your code and then walk away, leaving you with the task of qualification as well as problem resolution, code modification, and cleanup.

This is why Datatek takes full responsibility for any problems found during testing. What’s more, Datatek integrates its conversion process into the testing of the code so that problems are found as early as possible, Datatek’s converter is modified to handle those problems, and the code is regenerated. By using this method, each problem found in one place is fixed and eliminated from the entire code base.

And this is just one example of how we help you to be successful. From our initial assessment of your code to the moment you are ready to deploy, to the support that we provide you post-cutover, Datatek will customize itself to your needs so that you get the maximum benefit from our services.

 

We Handle All Aspects & Features Used In Your Code

The following is just a brief list of some of the PL/I functionality that we are frequently asked if we can convert:

  • Resolution of non-fully qualified names
  • PL/I data types (BIT, VAR CHAR, DECIMAL, PIC, ENTRY, ...)
  • Storage classes (BASED, CONTROLLED, REFER, ...)
  • Scoping of variables
  • Internal procedures/functions
  • PL/I I/O (Stream, Record, ...)
  • Implicit data type conversions
  • Separating data declarations and code used in INCLUDE files
  • Array cross sections
  • Built-in functions/pseudovariables (SUBSTR, INDEX, UNSPEC, ...)
  • ON Units
  • Default attributes

We handle all aspects and features used in your application’s PL/I code and we convert it into consistent, maintainable code in the target language.

For Over 15 Years, Customers Have Entrusted Us With Their Most Valuable Assets

Datatek has been successfully performing automated language conversions and system migrations since 1994. We’ve performed over a hundred application conversions and complete system migrations customizing the process for each client’s needs. During that time, Datatek has successfully converted millions of lines of PL/I. Because we bring a high level of knowledge, experience and skill to the table, we can assist you in crafting the right solution for your project. Let us put our experience and insight to work for you!

Source Languages We Convert

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