Enterprise COBOL for z/OS

• Support for new SQL data types and new SQL syntax provided by DB2 V9
• options are shown in the compiler listing (DB2 V9 only)
• SQLCA and SQLDA control blocks are expanded in the compiler listing(all DB2 releases)
• A new compiler option SQLCCSID is provided to coordinate the coded character set ID (CCSID) between COBOL and DB2

• The maximum data-item size has been raised from 16 MB to 128 MB.
• The maximum PICTURE symbol replication has been raised to 134,217,727.
• The maximum OCCURS integer has been raised to 134,217,727.

This support facilitates programming with large amounts of data, for example:

• DB2/COBOL applications that use DB2 BLOB and CLOB data types
• COBOL XML applications that parse or generate large XML documents

• Create object instances of Java classes.
• Invoke methods on Java objects.
• Define Java classes, with methods implemented in COBOL. You can create object instances of these classes, and invoke methods of these classes, from either Java or COBOL.
• A new special register and copybook let you easily call services that the Java Native Interface provides. These services include Unicode- and EBCDIC-based services for handling strings and for managing local and global object references.

• Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) to locate EJB services and components
• Java ORB to invoke methods on enterprise beans

• Process XML documents in the principal run-time environments, such as CICS, IMS, and MQSeries.
• Validate XML documents to ensure that they conform to established XML standards.
• Populate COBOL data structures with the content of XML documents.

For example, in a business-to-business environment, XML support enhances your existing high-performance IMS transactions written in COBOL, by accepting XML data as input. XML data can be placed in, and retrieved from, the IMS messages queue for all message regions, including MPP, IFP, and BMP.

New in Version 4.1:
The XML GENERATE statement has been extended with new syntax that gives the programmer more flexibility and control over the form of the XML document that is generated.

• WITH ATTRIBUTES phrase, eligible items in the XML document are generated as XML attributes instead of elements
• WITH ENCODING phrase, which allows the user to specify the encoding of the generated document
• NAMESPACE and NAMESPACE-PREFIX phrases, which allow generation of XML documents that use XML namespaces
• WITH XML-DECLARATION, which includes the version and the encoding information in the document

The XML GENERATE statement now supports generation of XML documents encoded in UTF-8 Unicode.

The XML PARSE support has been enhanced.

• The z/OS XML System Services parser is now supported as an alternative to the existing XML parser that is part of the COBOL library
• The z/OS XML System Services parser provides the following benefits:
  • the latest IBM parsing technology is available to COBOL users
  • offload a portion of the COBOL XML parsing performed within XMLSS to zAAP specialty processors.
  • improved support for parsing XML documents that use XML namespaces
  • direct support is provided for parsing XML documents that are encoded in UTF-8 Unicode
  • support for parsing very large XML documents, a buffer of XML at a time
• Four new special registers are introduced for namespace processing during execution of XML PARSE statements
• The XML PARSE statement has been extended with new syntax WITH EN-CODING and RETURNING NATIONAL that gives the programmer control over the assumed encoding of input XML documents, to facilitate parsing in Unicode
• A new compiler option, XMLPARSE, has been created to control whether the z/OS System Services parser or the existing COBOL parser is used for XML PARSE statements. With the XMLPARSE(COMPAT) option XML parsing is fully compatible with Enterprise COBOL Version 3. With1 the XMLPARSE(XMLSS) options, the z/OS System Services parser is used and new XML parsing capabilities are enabled.

Performance of COBOL application programs has been enhanced by exploitation of new z/Architecture instructions. The performance of COBOL Unicode support (USAGE NATIONAL data) has been significantly improved.

• External decimal (national decimal) items
• External floating-point (national floating-point) items
• Numeric-edited items
• National-edited items
• Group (national group) items, supported by the GROUP-USAGE NATIONAL clause

You can convert UTF-8 data, or data in many other code pages, to UTF-16 by using the new NATIONAL-OF intrinsic function, and then you can process the data in UTF-16 in your COBOL program. When you have finished processing the data, you can convert it back to UTF-8 by using the new DISPLAY-OF intrinsic function. The new CODEPAGE compiler option lets you specify the code page used for alphanumeric and DBCS data (both data items and literals) in your program.

Through the NSYMBOL compiler option, you can also control whether national or DBCS processing is used for the N symbol in literals and PICTURE clauses.

• OS/390 Version 2 Release 10
• z/OS Version 1 Release 1 or later
• Batch, TSO, IMS, and UNIX

You can call POSIX APIs directly from COBOL to initialize or serialize threads. You can mix threaded COBOL programs with C/C++ and Language Environment®-enabled assembler programs in a multithreaded Language Environment enclave.

The level of support for threads and asynchronous signal toleration in Enterprise COBOL is analogous to that provided by IBM VisualAge COBOL for Windows NT and COBOL Set for AIX.

• Enhancements in the interactive debugging of COBOL applications using Debug Tool. Applications can be debugged at the original source level instead of at the level of the expanded source produced by the CICS translator.
• EXEC CICS and EXEC DLI statements can be included in copybooks without the need to translate them separately before compilation.
• Nested programs that contain EXEC CICS statements can be in separate files and can be included through a COPY statement.
• Binary fields in CICS control blocks are generated as USAGE COMP-5 instead of BINARY. Thus, there is no longer a dependency on the setting of the TRUNC compiler option.

The separate CICS translator approach is still supported in Enterprise COBOL.

• Compiler options can be specified in a data set
• When the XREF compiler option is used, the compiler listing includes cross references of COPY statements, libraries, and data sets
• Debug Tool V8.1 is supported
• A new suboption of the TEST compiler option enables support for the Debug Tool GOTO and JUMPTO commands when debugging optimized production programs
• DFSMS large-format data sets are supported
• Internal compiler limits have been increased to enable compilation of very large and complex COBOL source programs