As has been discussed, we are working on AMODE 64 COBOL in IBM COBOL development and have been for some years now. Trying to get all the players lined up has been a challenge. (IE: CICS, DB2, IMS, DFSORT, etc)
Our understanding from the beginning was that AMODE 64 COBOL would be for specialized cases, and not for general use. We have very few customers requesting AMODE 64 COBOL, and it is for special cases like moving data above the bar to do in memory searches of very large tables where the performance benefit outweighs any other aspect. Currently these customers are using AMODE 64 assembler for this specialized processing. We do not currently think that we would recommend AMODE 64 COBOL to everyone. For example, if I took an AMODE 31 application and recompiled all of the programs for AMODE 64 (just for fun, IE: no need for above the bar data) the application would necessarily run slower. This is because instead of 4-byte addresses the programs would be processing 8-byte addresses. For this reason alone, customers would most likely avoid AMODE 64 COBOL unless they had a real need for it (IE: storage constraint with AMODE 31, or need for improved performance for searching massive amounts of data in memory) So far, we have not heard of COBOL customers with data storage constraints below the BAR. We have heard of storage constraints for programs, especially in CICS, where multiple CICS regions are required to allow the sheer numbers of COBOL programs to be loaded below the BAR. This is an RMODE 64 question, as in ARRRMODE however, and I am focused on AMODE 64 for this posting. Because of all of this, we consider it acceptable to have some restrictions on using AMODE 64 COBOL. We are also trying to do what we can to make it easier to use AMODE 64 COBOL, but our general recommendation will most likely be to only use AMODE 64 COBOL if you really need it, not for general purposes. 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
