Developing COBOL programs for IMS

Although much of the coding of a COBOL program will be the same when running under IMS, be aware of the following recommendations and restrictions.

In COBOL, IMS message processing programs (MPPs) do not use non-IMS input or output statements such as READ, WRITE, REWRITE, OPEN, and CLOSE.

With Enterprise COBOL, you can invoke IMS facilities using the following interfaces:

  • CBLTDLI call
  • Language Environment® callable service CEETDLI
  • EXEC SQLIMS statements

CEETDLI behaves essentially the same way as CBLTDLI, except that CEETDLI enables LE condition handling to be used. There are some instances when you cannot use Language Environment condition handling when using CBLTDLI under IMS.

You can also run object-oriented COBOL programs in a Java™ dependent region. You can mix the object-oriented COBOL and Java languages in a single application.

related concepts  
IMS SQL coprocessor