Issue 3 Articles in this issue: IBM COBOL Goes Hollywood Big News for PL/I & C Got a Migrainetion Headache? New "How To" Book Ships At Your Service! Tips & Hints LE at the Drags 2000 A COBOL Odyssey COBOL/370 New Compiler Function SO Why COBOL/370? IBM COBOL goes Hollywood! On October 4th IBM announced the most significant enhancements to its COBOL line in the last decade. This included, for the first time from IBM, workstation based products that will run initially on OS/2 and AIX - soon to be followed by products for Windows and other UNIX environments. IBM is investing millions of dollars into COBOL language technology. We firmly believe that customers can reap the benefits of new technologies, optimize their skills base, and at the same time protect their business assets through the ease of maintainability and readability that COBOL provides. These workstation products will be compatible with IBM's host COBOL compiler. For OS/2 the product will include a Visual Interface as well as Object Oriented technology. (One of the developers sat on the ANSI X3J4.1 COBOL subcommittee for Object support in COBOL and is an active participant in that organization.) Support for application development will be integrated with the workstation and host environments through a wide range of tools. These tools will provide program structuring, application and program understanding and an array of testing functions. In addition, this new product will link to the newly announced "IBM Team Connection" environment. All of these will provide a complete environment for IBM COBOL customers, including support for library management, data dictionary, data modeling and database design. In addition IBM has announced a new release of its host product, COBOL/370. This new release will add Object Oriented technology to the MVS environment. (This is a direct to SOM implementation.) The product name will be changed to IBM COBOL for MVS and VM Release 2. (Object support is limited to the MVS environment.) You may request a free copy of the following announcement letters from your IBM marketing representative, or by calling 1-800-IBM-3333, ask for STAR703 IBM COBOL Family Announce 294-640 SOMOBJECTS for MVS Announce 294-637 IBM Does VSE Too! IBM has also announced IBM COBOL for VSE, IBM PL/I for VSE and IBM LE for VSE. This announcement brings the LE (Language Environment) technology to the VSE platform. These enhancements bring affordable 31-bit support to our VSE customers. In addition they provide access to common services, and for COBOL include the ANSI 85 extensions for intrinsic functions (several of which address the "Year 2000 Problem."). These products aid the ability to write multi-language applications through easier ILC (Inter-Language Communications). IBM will be announcing that CCCA (COBOL & CICS Conversion Aid) will be available on VSE. This product will significantly reduce the effort for customers to move from DOS COBOL to IBM COBOL for VSE. This product will be available by year-end 1994. You may request a free copy of the following announcement letters from your IBM marketing representative, or by calling 1-800-IBM-3333, ask for STAR703 IBM COBOL Family Announce 294-640 VSE/ESA V2R1 Announce 294-519 Big News for PL/I & C In addition to the COBOL announcements that were mentioned above, IBM has announcend significant enhancements to its PL/I and C family of products. Specifically: PL/I: Enhanced the OS/2 PL/I visual development environment. Added multi-tasking support on MVS & VM Added PLICALLx functions to MVS & VM Added IBM debugger support via the CODE/370 product. For IBM's C products IBM has added: C++ support, Direct-to-SOM A starter set of C++ class libs IBM debugger support via the CODE/370 product These are major additions to the PL/I and C product line as well as to our CODE/370 debugger. You may request a free copy of the following announcement letters from your IBM marketing representative, or by calling 1-800-IBM-3333, ask for STAR703 IBM C++ for MVS/ESA, Letter 294-650 IBM PL/I Family, Letter 294-262 Got a Migrainetion Headache? IBM has announced the availability of a load module analyzer that can significantly reduce the levels of effort necessary to migrate from earlier versions of IBM's host COBOL and PL/I products. This tool analyzes existing application load libraries and provides data and statistical information about: Application Programs that: Contain Shared subroutines Require re-linking of runtime modules as a result of any arbitrary change Are impacted by implementation of a new runtime package Are not expected to be affected by the implementation of a new runtime package Contain interlanguage dependencies that may prove obstacles to migration Load Modules not conforming to the installation's established compiler and linkage editor standards. The release of a compiler and what options were used to produce the load module The linkage editor options that were used to produce the load module. This tool is known as the EDGE Portfolio Analyzer Version 1. To order call: IBM's COBOL Marketing Team (408) 463-3432 You may request a free copy of the following announcement letter from your IBM marketing representative, or by calling 1-800-IBM-3333, ask for STAR703 EDGE Portfolio Analyzer Version 1 (294-664) New "How To" Book Ships The IBM Information Development group, in concert with the COBOL developers, have produced an improved migration guide. This manual is a MUST for any one moving to LE/370 and COBOL/370. This guide covers product overviews, how to plan a migration strategy, and what we recommend. We also share detailed information on things you need to be aware of as you move from OS/VS COBOL or VS COBOL II. We have included a handy Q&A section. This document will be shipped with each new LE/370 license and can also be ordered from IBM. The publication number is GC26-4764-02. At Your Service IBM Santa Teresa Lab is offering several upgrade services for those of you upgrading to later versions of IBM's host COBOL products. These services include offerings for companies who: Need assistance in upgrading from OS/VS COBOL to VS COBOL II or IBM COBOL/370 Are interested in moving mainframe applications to a client/server architecture Are interested in code reuse in new applications Want to resolve the 2-digit year problem with the year 2000 Want to reduce application maintenance costs. For more information regarding these services you may contact Kathy Benson at (408) 463-4012. Tips & Hints: Here are some tips and hints for COBOL/370 and LE/370 users. They are organized by area of interest. Installation: Reset the following runtime options: CBLQDA(OFF) CBLOPTS(ON) ABTERMENC(ABEND) COBOL Assembler User Exit CEEBX05A Make sure to change the LE/370 default runtime storage options upon install. (See last newsletter or request a copy from the number below) CICS If you are not using C or PL/I on CICS, you can reduce the amount of ERDSA used by excluding the C and/or PL/I runtime routines from the PPT. The LE/370 installation & customization guide provides the information you need to do this. We recommend that you specify the LE/370 runtime option ALL31 as ALL31(ON). LE/370 will use much less below the line storage with ALL31(ON) as compared to running with ALL31(OFF). Note: ALL31(ON) can be set this way for CICS even if you are running OS/VS COBOL programs on CICS When your application has the following attributes, LE/370 does not use any below the line storage when running on CICS: The transaction is defined with TASKDATALOC(ANY) The LE/370 runtime option ALL31 is set to ALL31(ON) The COBOL/370 or VS COBOL II program is compiled with DATA(31) compiler option. IMS: See the LE/370 Programing Guide Section on IMS - running TRAP(ON). This is imperative for IMS users running LE/370 General: SYSUDUMP can continue to be used for diagnostics. LE/370 dump services provide most of the information to solve a problem from an application point of view. However, the SYSUDUMP provides additional information that can be helpful. If you want the SYSUDUMP, you need to set up an "Abnormal Termination Exit" to produce it. This is documented in the LE/370 install guide. In addition, APAR PN54638 added a sample abnormal termination exit that the customer can use (CEEBDATX). For important tips on performance considerations please request a copy of the COBOL/370 Performance Tuning Paper, (COBPERF) on the marketing tools disk. You may also contact 1-800-IBM-3333, ask for STAR703 LE at the Drags - or - Performance Performance Performance IBM is shipping a major IMS performance enhancement via PTF's for LE/370 release 3 customers. This enhancement provides VS COBOL II "LIBKEEP" like facilities for the LE/370 environment. Specifically, LE/370 will be enhanced to provide the capability to keep and reuse certain LE/370 resources while a task is active on MVS. The use of this function will not affect the behavior of applications other than improving the performance. The name of the enhancement is LE/370 Library Routine Retention (LRR). When initialized, LE/370 will keep certain LE/370 resources in memory after an LE/370 environment terminates. By keeping these resources available, subsequent invocations of programs in the same task that cause an LE/370 environment to be initialized will be much faster. PTF's will ship in December of 1994 for LE/370 V1R3.0. LE/370 V1R2.0 will NOT be modified. APARS PN63666 & PN63674 will implement this function. 2000 a COBOL Odyssey The year 2000 problem affects us all. We have recently put together a paper on how you can deal with it via COBOL/370 and LE/370. Specifically, the way to solve this problem in old applications is: Run your existing load modules under LE/370 Convert date routine to COBOL/370 Use the century window of LE/370 to interpret 2-digit years Call "CEECBLDY" USING input-date PICSTR LILLIAN FC. (Results in an integer representation) Use Intrinsic Functions to obtain 4-digit year DATE-OF-INTEGER gives YYYYMMDD DAY-OF-INTEGER gives YYYYDDD We have attached a detailed programming example to this newsletter. COBOL/370 New Functions IBM has shipped several new compiler enhancements to the COBOL/370 product. These included: A new OPTIMIZE(FULL) feature A new RMODE option in support of running NORENT programs above the line A new environment Name AFP-5A in Special Names (Requires PN55324 for LE/370 R2 and R3.) This allows exploitation of Advanced Function Printing (Places Hex '5A' control character in the control character position of the output record. 138 PTF's have been rolled into the base tape for 5688-197 (COBOL/370). Performance improvements Dynamic Call literal performance improved Optimized code generated for main entry point Improved performance of variable-length MOVEs of LINKAGE SECTION data items Optimized parameter list generated code (for USING phrase) Static initialization of WORKING-STORAGE variables at compile time for NORENT programs. This upgrade is available for order today and can be placed through your IBM representative. We've attached a free copy of our GUIDE presentation addressing this topic to this issue. Micro Focus (tm) & IBM Many of you have asked about our relationship with Micro Focus. IBM and Micro Focus have a relationship that we'd characterize, by borrowing the term coined by Ray Noorda of Novell, "COOPETITION". In others words, in some areas we compete directly, and in others we are cooperating. So Why COBOL/370? - from a Developers Perspective. We have attached a copy of our development paper on the advantages of moving to COBOL/370. This paper was presented at the November session of GUIDE in Atlanta. We hope you find it beneficial. Survey and Address Information: We'd like to hear back from you regarding whether or not you felt this newsletter was helpful. We also welcome articles from customers for future newsletters. We have allowed space for your comments and address information. This information must be filled in and faxed to IBM at 408 463-2425 in order for future releases of the newsletter to be mailed to you. If you have done so already, you need not do so again. We hope you have found this useful and we look forward to tailoring this document to your needs in the future. 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