Blackbox to blueprint: Extracting business logic from COBOL applications

The process of extracting business logic from COBOL applications involves addressing both technical and non-technical challenges, as these systems often contain complex and intertwined business rules crucial to organizational processes. Business rules in COBOL are often scattered across multiple files, interwoven with technical code, and further complicated by cryptic naming conventions and the use of legacy structures like GOTOs. These challenges are exacerbated by the evolution and maintenance of systems over decades, leading to obsolete logic and a scarcity of experts familiar with both COBOL and the associated business domains. To address these issues, a combination of modern techniques, including static code analysis and large language models (LLMs), is suggested. Static analysis tools can provide essential context and disambiguation, which, when combined with the pattern recognition capabilities of LLMs, can translate the complex COBOL code into human-readable business rules. This approach involves incrementally tackling complexity, progressively refining the ability to extract business rules, and adapting to the diverse challenges presented by real-world COBOL applications. The strategy aims to blend deep code analysis, AI, and methodical approaches to modernize legacy systems effectively.