Migrating from the separate CICS translator to the integrated translator
The separate CICS® translator has not been updated for newer COBOL language such as floating comment delimiters, JSON GENERATE and JSON PARSE, and compiler directives. To use the latest features of the COBOL compiler, use the integrated CICS translator.
When you migrate COBOL applications to use the integrated CICS translator:
- Delete the separate translation step from the compile process.
- Change the XOPTS translator option to
the CICS compiler option. The
suboptions string must be delimited with quotes or apostrophes. For
example, a program to be translated by the separate CICS translator might have a CBL statement like
this:
CBL TEST(NOEJPD), XOPTS(LINKAGE,SEQ,SP)
For the integrated CICS translator it must be changed to this:
CBL TEST(NOEJPD), CICS('LINKAGE,SEQ,SP')
- Move all CBL/PROCESS statements to the first lines of the source program. The integrated CICS translator does not accept comment lines preceding a CBL/PROCESS statement. The source program must conform to Enterprise COBOL rules.
- Check if you have nested programs that redefine DFHCOMMAREA. The integrated translator will not generate declarations of DFHCOMMAREA or DFHEIBLK in nested programs. DFHCOMMAREA and DFHEIBLK declarations are generated in the outermost program with the GLOBAL attribute specified. COBOL programs that depend on these generated declarations within nested programs require source changes.