Enterprise COBOL for z/OS

Exploitation of the latest z/Architecture and performance optimization of COBOL applications

• Using the ARCH compiler option, you can select optimization and processor architecture levels. The ARCH(10) option produces code that uses instructions that are available on the IBM zEnterprise EC12 servers.
• Using the OPTIMIZE(0), OPTIMIZE(1), and OPTIMIZE(2) options, you can obtain multiple levels of increasing optimization that run from comprehensive low-level optimizations to more extensive optimizations that can improve the performance of your COBOL applications. The OPTIMIZE(1) option includes optimizations that improve application runtime performance while preserving debugging capabilities.
• Computationally intensive COBOL applications see great performance improvements. Using the OPTIMIZE option, you can reduce the run time of your object program and reduce the amount of storage your object program uses.

UNICODE enhancements

• The ULENGTH function returns an integer equal to the length, in UTF-8 characters, of a character string argument that is encoded in UTF-8.
• The USUBSTR function returns a substring of a character string argument that is encoded in UTF-8.
• The USUPPLEMENTARY function returns an integer equal to the index of the first Unicode supplementary character in a character string argument that is encoded in UTF-8 or UTF-16.
• The UVALID function returns an integer which has the value zero if a character string contains valid Unicode UTF-8 or UTF-16 data, and which has the index of the first invalid element if the character string does not contain valid Unicode data.
• The UWIDTH function returns an integer equal to the width in bytes of the nth UTF-8 character in a character string argument that is encoded in UTF-8.

XML processing enhancements

• Enterprise COBOL for z/OS V5.1 provides the new XML-INFORMATION special register to determine whether an XML EVENT and its associated XML-INFORMATION value are complete.
• The XML GENERATE statement is extended with new syntax that gives the programmer more flexibility and control over the form of the XML document that is generated.
• XML PARSE statements in V5 programs always use the z/OS XML System Services Parser.

Increased compiler limits

• A number of limits imposed by the compiler have been raised to improve usability and enable COBOL applications to further exploit available processor storage.
• In Enterprise COBOL for z/OS V5.1, there is no aggregate data division limit and the limit for an individual data item is 999, 999, 999 bytes.
• With the increase of limits on data items, table and table element, linkage section and data division sizes, you can use Enterprise COBOL for z/OS V5.1 to work with even larger volumes of data while employing business analytics to uncover opportunities.

Support for unbounded tables and groups

• A new keyword UNBOUNDED is added to the OCCURS DEPENDING on clause which enables you to define variable length tables and groups.
• With the UNBOUNDED keyword, you no longer need to specify the maximum number of occurrences for a table and the containing group.
• Usability in defining variable length tables in COBOL is improved particularly when defining COBOL group structures that correspond to XML documents.