Enterprise Generation Language

IBM has announced their Enterprise Generation Language (EGL). This is a new language to help with modernization legacy systems. The big idea is to convert legacy apps to the EGL. Then you can compile the EGL to a modern language and platform. Some applicable legacy environments to convert from in clued green screened terminal apps. The benefit from the conversion is that you can avoid any 3rd party licensing costs.

A main destination language that EGL targets is COBOL. You can compile EGL into COBOL for the IBM CICS or iSeries hardware platforms. You can also compile the EGL to Java to run on Websphere or Tomcat. Finally you can compile EGL to JavaScript to run in a web browser.

All of this EGL business is a shortcut from manually porting legacy code to a specific target system. A lot of legacy code has already been rewritten in Java. However the EGL case does sound good if you need to target multiple environments. Just convert the legacy code once to the EGL. Then you let the software do the hard work of porting to multiple environments. How do you like that?