Several things have come together to give us a better recommendation for customers who want to migrate to COBOL V5 but who also want to avoid discovering 'differences' when they deploy into production.
First, some background. As usual, read the COBOL Migration Guide: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS6SG3_5.2.0/welcome.html Second, some of the most difficult problems when migrating to COBOL V5 are not caused by changes in the COBOL language supported by the compiler, but instead are caused by 'invalid COBOL' that cannot be detected by inspecting source code. The top six most common of these are: o Invalid data in numeric USAGE DISPLAY data items o Parameter/argument size mismatch: o Modifying data outside the bounds of a table o Using tables when the ODO object value is not in the legal range o Modifying data following a table with INDEXED BY indexes o Overpopulated data items, with values that have more digits than are defined in the data definitions In order to find these more easily, we should recommend that users: - Always compile with RULES(NOEVENPACK) - Use the "Scanning COBOL programs for compatibility" feature of RDz 9.5 to check parameters and arguments - Compile with SSRANGE, ZONECHECK and OPT(0) for initial code changes and unit test - Recompile with NOSSRANGE, NOZONECHECK and OPT(2) for quality assurance test and production Finally, in the topic of "Before you buy COBOL V5", we should recommend the following: - Install the latest maintenance on LE and other products for COBOL V5 (Use the COBOL V5 FIXCAT feature as documented here: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21648871. ) - Change build processes to add REPLACE IGZEBST in the BIND/LINK step to fix the "old VS COBOL II bootstrap" problem - Convert PDS load libraries to PDSE - Locate all OS/VS COBOL programs and either target them for early migration to V5 or migrate to V4 now Cheers, TomR >> COBOL is the Language of the Future! << ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
