Techdocs Library > FAQs > S/390 Frequently Asked Question

Document Author:	Nigel Miller		Document ID:	FQ114260
Doc. Organization:	Techline Europe		Document Revised:	08/11/2008
Product(s) covered:	S/390; z/OS

FAQ: What is involved in COBOL Migration from an old version of COBOL to Enterprise COBOL on Z/OS?

Answer to this FAQ:

The work involved in migrating to Enterprise COBOL depends where you are starting from. This document deals only with issues that affect the COBOL application programs directly. There are two aspects to any migration, and you may need to consider both. Run Time Environment. If you are running COBOL with COBOL run time libraries then you will need to migrate to the Language Environment. This migration can be awkward, particularly if your applications are coded in a way that is not documented in IBM manuals, as the programs may then run differently under Language Environment. You will need to perform proper integration testing on them to ensure there are no issues of this sort. The COBOL compiler. We would recommend that you migrate to Enterprise COBOL V4R1: According to the announcement letter http://w3-3.ibm.com/sales/ssi/fcgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=an&subtype=ca&htmlfid=897/ENUS205-153&appname=mynews you would need to do the following to migrate to Enterprise COBOL V3R4, and migration to Enterprise COBOL for Z/OS 4.1 is very similar. Compatibility: The following summarizes the compatibility characteristics of Enterprise COBOL for z/OS V3. Full details will be provided in the Migration Guide and the Licensed Programming Specifications. Enterprise COBOL for z/OS V3 provides source code and object code compatibility with its predecessor product, IBM COBOL for OS/390 & VM V2, with the following exceptions: The CMPR2 compiler option has been removed. Source programs still using VS COBOL II R1 or R2 level syntax must be migrated to conform to ANS/ISO COBOL 85 standard rules before they can be compiled with IBM Enterprise COBOL V3. System Object Model™ (SOM®)-based object-oriented (OO) COBOL applications are no longer supported. Object-oriented COBOL syntax is "retargeted" for Java™-based OO programming. Further, the primary purpose of the object-oriented syntax is not stand-alone OO COBOL programming. The syntax is intended to facilitate interoperation of COBOL and Java. New reserved words have been added. In addition to CMPR2, the ANALYZE, FLAGMIG, IDLGEN, and TYPECHK compiler options are removed. The pseudo-assembly listing produced by the LIST compiler option is slightly changed, which may impact development tools that process the listing. IBM recommends that such tools use the ADATA compiler option to obtain desired information about the compilation rather than the listing. The defaults for compiler options DBCS, FLAG, RENT, and XREF have been changed from NODBCS to DBCS, FLAG (I) TO FLAG (I, I), NORENT to RENT, and NOXREF to XREF (FULL). Full details are given in the Migration Guide. 3. The announcement letter for Enterprise COBOL for Z/OS V4R1 (see http://w3-01.ibm.com/sales/ssi/index.wss?DocURL=http://g01eihttpcl002.ahe.pok.ibm.com/sales/ssi/rep_ia/3/877/ENUSZP07-0403/index.html&InfoType=AN&InfoSubType=IA&InfoDesc=Announcement+Letters&panelurl=index.wss&paneltext=Announcement+letters) provides for further integration of CICS and DB2 code with COBOL with integrated translators as follows: Support for the integrated CICS translator (CICS compiler option) requires CICS Transaction Server for z/OS, V2 (5697-E93), or V3 (5655-M15). Support for DB2 integrated coprocessor (SQL compiler option) requires: DB2 Universal Database for z/OS, Version 9 (5635-DB2) DB2 Universal Database for z/OS, Version 8 (5625-DB2) DB2 Universal Database, Version 7 (5675-DB2) You may have other issues to address if you are also migrating either operating system or middleware at the same time.

Classification:	Software	Category:	Installation and Migration
Solution(s):	Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
Platform(s):	IBM System z Family	S/W Pillar(s):	System z
O/S:	OS/390; z/OS	Keywords:	COBOL, Migration