IBM Enterprise PL/I for z/OS 6.1 allows you to call 64-bit PL/I programs from 31-bit PL/I programs, and it also allows you to call 31-bit PL/I programs from 64-bit PL/I programs. The former capability is crucial if you want to extend existing PL/I programs that need access to very large amounts of data, and the latter capability is crucial if you want to have your PL/I code called from Python or 64-bit Java code.

The compiler now supports 64-bit applications with the LP(64) option. This means that all the storage limitations of 32-bit applications are lifted; your application can now acquire and manipulate more than 2GB of total storage, and individual structures and arrays can now be larger than 2GB in size. Moreover, you can exploit the removal of these data limits while using all the PL/I statements and functions as in your existing 32-bit applications.

The compiler now fully supports UTF-16 and UTF-8. You can use the ULENGTH function to return the number of UTF-8 or UTF-16 characters in a CHAR or WIDECHAR string, respectively. Enterprise PL/I for z/OS also provides native support for UTF-8 data in data items, intrinsic functions and in move and compare operations, allowing you to easily build maintainable applications that can process UTF-8 data efficiently.

The compiler now provides a new level of z/OS System Management Facilities (SMF) tracking support that allows you, when you have implemented sub-capacity tracking, to reduce your administrative reporting overhead.

The compiler now provides new and enhanced attributes, built-in functions, pseudovariables, and subroutines to improve programmer productivity. A new XMLNAME attribute is introduced to let you specify a name that does not conform to PL/I name rules.

The compiler now improves middleware functionality with additional SQL support for Db2® applications. The SQL preprocessor now parses the DEFINE ALIAS, DEFINE ORDINAL, and DEFINE STRUCTURE statements.

Parse, generate, and validate JSON text using built-in functions right in your PL/I code. Parse JSON even without knowing how many entries there are. No need to worry about whitespace characters in your JSON, as they will be skipped over when found.

The compiler can receive, manipulate, and send Java data without any translation, because it supports the IEEE decimal floating point standard. To further improve Java interoperability, the compiler now provides a thread-safe PL/I library and multithreading statements (ATTACH, WAIT, DETACH) as part of the PL/I language supported.

The Enterprise PL/I for z/OS® Compiler and Runtime Migration Guide provides you with helpful information you might need to move your existing OS PL/I V2 and PL/I for MVS™ applications to the new runtime environment. Migrating to the new compiler allows your existing applications to take advantage of the many new functions available in Enterprise PL/I for z/OS and to enjoy the many performance benefits provided by the new compiler.

Enterprise PL/I for z/OS is part of a family of compatible compilers, application development tools, and maintenance tools. Along with Enterprise PL/I for z/OS, IBM offers PL/I compilers for multiple platforms as well as IBM File Manager, IBM Fault Analyzer, and Debug Tool. The recommended workstation-based development environment is IBM Developer for z/OS, which provides an interactive, workstation-based environment to help you create, maintain, and reuse applications.

IBM Enterprise PL/I for z/OS reduces CPU usage of decimal compute intensive applications. PL/I applications may not automatically run faster when they are moved to new hardware. Modern IBM Z mainframes deliver performance with specific hardware features. To maximize ROI on z16™, stay current with PL/I 6.1 and selectively optimize CPU-intensive applications.