To be clear, these End of Support (EoS) dates are for the particular COBOL *compilers*. From a runtime point of view IBM takes great pains to assure that compiled COBOL programs continue to run and interoperate, and indeed there are many programs compiled decades ago that are still providing useful business and government service. Exceptions and caveats are for strong technical reasons, and IBM carefully documents the exceptions and caveats.
There are often compelling reasons to recompile programs using the latest Enterprise COBOL 6.2 compiler (the current release as I write this), or at least to pass them through the latest Automatic Binary Optimizer (ABO). In practice, many customers selectively and opportunistically recompile, as they modify code and/or as they identify programs that could/must benefit from the new compiler. If you need some advice on how to move forward, please ask. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM Z & LinuxONE, Multi-Geography E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
