Dyncorp (WSCRS-I)

One Star Technologies (WSCRS-II)

United States Air Force

Weapons System Cost Retrieval System (WSCRS I & II )

Amdahl COBOL to C++

History: The U.S. Air Force's Weapons System Cost Retrieval System (WSCRS), designation H036C, was written in COBOL ran on an Amdahl-5890 platform and used a flat file data base. The system required modernization by the Wright-Patterson Mission System Group (MSG) to improve base support for the Air Force weapon financial systems . The modernized system required a modern language and modern operating system to achieve compatibility with the Air Force Global Combat Support System (GCSS) and lower platform support costs.

WSCRS was a unique high quality Air Force financial system with no equivalent commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) application. Platform obsolescence and operating costs were major financial drivers for the WSCRS modernization. The only practical approaches for this modernization project were a manual rewrite or an automated transformation. Initially a manual rewrite was attempted, but project schedule slippage occurred and tightening IT budgetary restrictions threatened further project delays. Dyncorp contracted with TSRI to modernize WSCRS in two fixed-price project phases. Phase-1 was a proof of concept pilot and Phase-2 completed the modernization of the entire WSCRS system.

Challenge: The Phase-1 pilot project required TSRI to modify its toolset to achieve a 100% automated transformation of WSCRS COBOL code into a target C++ compatible with Microsoft Visual Studio support environment and Windows 2000 operating environment. The proof of concept also established base-line metrics and a test environment for the converted code. The WSCRS system modernization required replacement of all database and data manipulation commands with an equivalent C++ file system and generation of a C++ system with full functional equivalency.

Results: TSRI transformed 100% of the WSCRS COBOL code into C++ partitioning the system into business logic and data base tiers using polymorphic class and methods to allow for an eventual database upgrade. The original structure of the flat file database was preserved, but a data manipulation tier was automatically introduced into the C++ version of WSCRS to provide independent data manipulation commands allowing for the eventual upgrade to a relational database. TSRI automatically generated 100% of the C++ using the original COBOL source code as a template and made all environment-level operating system call adaptations automatically to create a functionally equivalent C++ system operating in the Microsoft Windows 2000 operating environment.

During the proof-of-concept phase, the transformation process was tuned until 100% of the generated code satisfied regression tests. Smooth installation and acceptance testing was enhanced by the customer's ability to provide test input and test output data files for each COBOL program. TSRI built an automated test bed allowing the customer's test data to be compared as each transformed C++ program was run against the input data files to generate target output files. This allowed the outputs of the legacy COBOL system and the outputs of the modernized C++ system to be compared automatically. This greatly reduced TSRI's time frame for internal testing and facilitated an error free delivery to the customer several weeks ahead of schedule. It is interesting to note that minor differences were found, in the 8th digit of precision of some test data output values. These differences were attributed to C++ permitting higher precision intermediate arithmetic calculations for numbers originally written as binary coded decimals (BCD) in COBOL.

Building upon the success of the proof-of-concept conducted in Phase-1, TSRI quickly completed tool modifications and internal testing.  In only two weeks, the second increment of WSCRS was delivered to One Star Technologies, who completed integration and deployment of the system at MSG. A good working relationship between TSRI, and One Star Technologies, allowed TSRI to conduct all modernization work at their Kirkland facility. TSRI provided remote support for customer acceptance testing and deployment without requiring travel or on-site support.