I would like to draw your attention to an important new technology now available: a new binary optimizer for COBOL programs called "IBM Automatic Binary Optimizer" (ABO for short). IBM ABO's Program Number is 5697-AB1. A trial edition is available using IBM Program Number 5697-TR1. Both are available through Shopz now (or through your country's IBM ordering service if your country doesn't have IBM Shopz). The announcement is available here:
http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/7/897/ENUS215-407/ENUS215-407.PDF The no charge trial license is restricted to non-production environments. Suppose you have hundreds, thousands, or even one million or more COBOL programs compiled with Enterprise COBOL Version 3 and/or Version 4. These older COBOL compilers targeted "ARCH(0)," meaning they didn't take advantage of any of the new, high performance instructions available on zEC12, zBC12, and particularly z13 machines. They're a long, long way from ARCH 11 (z13) -- a couple decades off. Perhaps some of your COBOL programs are vendor-supplied, and you don't have the source code. Or (let's hope not!) perhaps you've lost some source code. IBM ABO can take that existing, compiled binary code and run it through an optimizer that, like magic, results in new binary code that exploits the new processor instructions and thus performs much better. Results naturally vary, but double digit percentage performance improvements are common. You don't need to change any JCL. ABO takes advantage of new z/OS operating system support to load the optimized modules automatically without requiring JCL changes. Though some testing is merited (as always), you shouldn't have to do much testing, and your testing should focus on performance and scalability assessments. IBM (and third party) problem determination tools such as IBM Debug Tool, IBM Fault Analyzer, and IBM Application Performance Analyzer continue to work just fine. Prerequisites include at least one LPAR with z/OS 2.2 and at least one zBC12, zEC12, or z13 machine. ABO will yield its performance benefits on such LPARs and machines, though you can continue targeting backlevel LPARs and machines, such as older DR machines, with your existing binaries if you wish (or with recompiled Enterprise COBOL V5.2 binaries of course). ABO is not a replacement for Enterprise COBOL Version 5.2. Instead, ABO is a recommended, complementary technology. If you're not quite ready to recompile all your COBOL programs -- or, as mentioned, if you have vendor-supplied COBOL binaries -- then ABO can still help you enjoy at least some of the performance benefits achievable on new mainframe processors. During the normal course of your code maintenance activities Enterprise COBOL Version 5.2 recompiles will then take over. Going forward my expectation is that the combination of the latest COBOL compilers and the latest ABO technologies will help you better stay on track with future processor improvements and COBOL innovations. If you still have COBOL programs compiled before Enterprise COBOL Version 3, that's fine. They will continue to run. However, IBM ABO will not be able to improve their run-time performance. I recommend that you also start recompiling such programs with the latest Enterprise COBOL compiler (currently Version 5.2 as I write this), at least through the course of ordinary code maintenance tasks. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
