If you have very large programs and you want to optimise them to Level 1 or Level 2, then Enterprise COBOL V6.1 is your best bet. The optimiszer was re-written with 64-bit addressing and is now much more comfortable with large programs (which may just fail to compile with V5.2).
V6.1 is now "continuous delivery". Meaning new functionality, not just fixes and retro-fitting, can and is being supplied by PTF. Consider use of the Automatic Binary Optimizer (ABO). This can allow your COBOL programs to benefit from z/ARCH instructions without needing to be recompiled. This can allow you to rework your planning. Biggest problem seems to have been the need for PDSE: no more loadmodules, now Program Objects, which must be in a PDSE. ABO again offers some extra flexibility by not requiring PDSE for all executables. IBM has done a lot of work over the last few months to reproduce V4.2 output where the results expected are "undefined" across all compilers, but have a specific outcome under a particular compiler. You could chose ABO for "everything" and V5/v6 for new development/maintenance (an incremental "migration") through to Big Bang, V5/V6-only, and devil take the hind-most. Or anything in between. ABO has not been around long, and V1.2 only since last November. ABO gives you some new ways to do migration, but be aware that there are still discussions (including on this list) as to how much testing is required for an ABO over a recompile. Ask your friendly IBM rep if you can talk to the ABO people in Markham about your specific site :-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
