COBOL for AIX

COBOL for AIX allows you to use your existing COBOL code to upgrade your applications with the newest technologies. The goal of COBOL for AIX is to enable developers to leverage over 3 decades' worth of applications in new endeavors. It delivers needed COBOL function to continue integration of COBOL and Web-oriented business processes.

New features that support 64-bit application development
A new compiler option, ADDR, lets you indicate whether the compiler generates 32-bit or 64-bit object programs.

Several limits on COBOL data-item size have been significantly raised. For example, the maximum size of the LOCAL-STORAGE, WORKING-STORAGE, and LINKAGE sections is essentially unlimited (up to the addressing capacity of the machine) if ADDR(64) is in effect.

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

Support for files larger than 2GB
STL and VSAM files created by COBOL for AIX, V3.1 programs are no longer limited to a maximum size of 2 GB. These files can also be processed by V2 programs that are run with the V3.1 runtime library.

New FILEMODE runtime option
FILEMODE lets you specify whether newly created STL and VSAM files will have the new large format that supports files larger than 2 GB, or the small format and the 2 GB maximum size that is compatible with STL and VSAM files created by V2 programs.

Additional Unicode features
Support for national (Unicode UTF-16) data has been enhanced. Several additional kinds of data items can now be described implicitly or explicitly as USAGE NATIONAL, as follows:

• External decimal (national decimal)

• External floating-point (national floating-point)

• Numeric-edited items

• National-edited items

• Group (national group) items, supported by the GROUP-USAGE NATIONAL clause

Many COBOL language elements in support of new national UTF-16 data

• Numeric data with USAGE NATIONAL (national decimal and national floating point) can be used in arithmetic operations and in any language constructs that support numeric operands.

• Edited data with USAGE NATIONAL is supported in the same language constructs as any existing edited type, including editing and de-editing operations associated with the MOVE statements.

• Group items that contain all national data can be defined with the GROUP-USAGE NATIONAL clause, which results in the group behaving as an elementary item in most language constructs. This support facilitates use of national groups in statements such as STRING, UNSTRING, and INSPECT.

• The NUMVAL and NUMVAL-C intrinsic functions can take a national literal or national data item as an argument.

• Using these new national data capabilities, it is now practical to develop COBOL programs that exclusively use Unicode for all application data.

XML GENERATE statement enhancements
The XML GENERATE statement is extended with new syntax that gives you more flexibility and control over the form of the XML document that is generated:

• The WITH ATTRIBUTES phrase allows the user to specify that eligible items in the XML document be generated as XML attributes instead of as elements.

• The WITH ENCODING phrase allows the user to specify the encoding of the generated document.

• The NAMESPACE and NAMESPACE-PREFIX phrases allow generation of XML documents that use XML namespaces.

• The WITH XML-DECLARATION phrase 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.

XML PARSE statement enhancements
Direct support is provided for parsing XML documents that are encoded in UTF-8 Unicode.

Additional enhancements

• Compiler listings now cross-reference copybooks to the library names and file names from which the copybooks are obtained.

• Support for new features of DB2 V9 is enabled when you use the integrated DB2 coprocessor (SQL compiler option).

• Usability enhancements to COBOL-DB2 applications are available when you use the integrated DB2 coprocessor, for example, an explicitly coded LOCAL-STORAGE SECTION or WORKING-STORAGE SECTION is no longer required.

• A new callable service, IWZGETSORTERRNO, makes it possible to obtain the sort or merge error number after each sort or merge operation.

• The REDEFINES clause has been enhanced such that for data that are not level 01, the subject of the entry can be larger than the data item being redefined.

• A new compiler option, MDECK, causes the output from library-processing statements to be written to a file.

• The literal in a VALUE clause for a data item of class national can be alphanumeric.

New and improved debugger for the AIX operating system
The IBM Debugger for AIX is an interactive source-level debugger. It works on an AIX-based client that is connected locally or remotely through a network connection to a debugger engine running on AIX or on a Windows-based client that is connected remotely to a debugger engine running on AIX. The Debugger for AIX enables you to debug programs that are written in C, C++, and COBOL in 32-bit or 64-bit mode from the convenience of your workstation.

The debugger displays application source files and the elements in those source files. You can single-step, step through, step over, or stop execution at a specified line or condition. While controlling execution, you can monitor variables, registers, memory, call stacks, and other elements.

COBOL for AIX, V3.1 is part of the family of IBM COBOL compilers that support a number of platforms. The IBM COBOL family consists of COBOL for AIX, Enterprise COBOL for z/OS, ILE COBOL for System i, and COBOL for Windows (packaged as part of IBM Rational Developer for System z).