[NikolaNovak]

Note that COBOL does exist outside of mainframe systems. Peoplesoft is a fairly popular HR Payroll package and works on what they call distributed systems as well (windows Linux Unix rtc). I've worked on various peoplesoft systems over the years and they include a mixture of "modern" but proprietary languages (peoplecode, application engine) as well as legacy (Cobol, sqr). Currently on a project that implements them on Unix,serving 350k self service employees. Data issues are indeed our number one type of defect. I wonder how much that is language vs environment that language is typically deployed - I.e. Our own reasons for data being our number one issue seem external, but maybe there's data handling capabilities, or lack thereof, that we are blind to.