Changes in IBM® Enterprise COBOL for z/OS, Version 3 Release 4

• Several limits on COBOL data-item size have been significantly raised, for example:
  • The maximum data-item size has been raised from 16 MB to 128 MB.
  • The maximum PICTURE symbol replication has been raised to 134,217,727.
  • The maximum OCCURS integer has been raised to 134,217,727.

  (For full details about changed compiler limits, see the Enterprise COBOL for z/OS® Language Reference.) This support facilitates programming with large amounts of data, for example:

  • Db2®/COBOL applications that use Db2 BLOB and CLOB data types
  • COBOL XML applications that parse or generate large XML documents
• Support for national (Unicode UTF-16) data has been enhanced. Several additional kinds of data items can now be described implicitly or explicitly as USAGE NATIONAL:
  • External decimal (national decimal) items
  • External floating-point (national floating-point) items
  • Numeric-edited items
  • National-edited items
  • Group (national group) items, supported by the GROUP-USAGE NATIONAL clause
• Many COBOL language elements support the new kinds of UTF-16 data, or newly support the processing of national data:
  • Numeric data with USAGE NATIONAL (national decimal and national floating point) can be used in arithmetic operations and in any language constructs that support numeric operands .
  • Edited data with USAGE NATIONAL is supported in the same language constructs as any existing edited type, including editing and de-editing operations associated with moves.
  • Group items that contain all national data can be defined with the GROUP-USAGE NATIONAL clause, which results in the group behaving as an elementary item in most language constructs. This support facilitates use of national groups in statements such as STRING, UNSTRING, and INSPECT.
  • The XML GENERATE statement supports national groups as receiving data items, and national-edited, numeric-edited of USAGE NATIONAL, national decimal, national floating-point, and national group items as sending data items.
  • The NUMVAL and NUMVAL-C intrinsic functions can take a national literal or national data item as an argument.

  Using these new national data capabilities, it is now practical to develop COBOL programs that exclusively use Unicode for all application data.

• The REDEFINES clause has been enhanced such that for data items that are not level 01, the subject of the entry can be larger than the data item being redefined.
• A new compiler option, MDECK, causes the output from library-processing statements to be written to a file .
• Db2 coprocessor support has been enhanced: XREF is improved.
• The literal in a VALUE clause for a data item of class national can be alphanumeric .

These terminology changes were also made in this release:

• The term alphanumeric group is introduced to refer specifically to groups other than national groups.
• The term group means both alphanumeric groups and national groups except when used in a context that obviously refers to only an alphanumeric group or only a national group.
• The term external decimal refers to both zoned decimal items and national decimal items.
• The term alphanumeric floating point is introduced to refer to an external floating-point item that has USAGE DISPLAY.
• The term external floating point refers to both alphanumeric floating-point items and national floating-point items.