Industry specifications

Enterprise COBOL supports various industry standards.

  • ISO COBOL standards
    • ISO 1989:1985, Programming languages - COBOL

      ISO 1989:1985 is identical to ANSI INCITS 23-1985 (R2001), Programming Languages - COBOL

    • ISO/IEC 1989/AMD1:1992, Programming languages - COBOL: Intrinsic function module

      ISO/IEC 1989/AMD1:1992 is identical to ANSI INCITS 23a-1989 (R2001), Programming Languages - Intrinsic Function Module for COBOL

    • ISO/IEC 1989/AMD2:1994, Programming languages - Correction and clarification amendment for COBOL

      ISO/IEC 1989/AMD2:1994 is identical to ANSI INCITS 23b-1993 (R2001), Programming Language - Correction Amendment for COBOL

      All required modules are supported at the highest level defined by the standard.

      The following optional modules of the standard are supported:

      • Intrinsic Functions (1 ITR 0,1)
      • Debug (1 DEB 0,2)
      • Segmentation (2 SEG 0,2)

      The Report Writer optional module of the standard is supported with the optional IBM® COBOL Report Writer Precompiler and Libraries (5798-DYR).

      The following optional modules of the standard are not supported:

      • Communications
      • Debug (2 DEB 0,2)
    • ISO/IEC 1989:2002, Information technology - Programming languages - COBOL (partial support)

      ISO/IEC 1989:2002 is identical to ANSI INCITS 1989-2002 (R2013), Information technology - Programming languages COBOL

      For a list of 2002 COBOL Standard features that are implemented since Enterprise COBOL Version 3, see 2002 COBOL Standard features implemented in Enterprise COBOL Version 3 or later versions.

  • ANSI COBOL standards
    • ANSI INCITS 23-1985 (R2001), Programming Languages - COBOL
    • ANSI INCITS 23a-1989 (R2001), Programming Languages - Intrinsic Function Module for COBOL
    • ANSI INCITS 23b-1993 (R2001), Programming Language - Correction Amendment for COBOL

      All required modules are supported at the highest level defined by the standard.

      The following optional modules of the standard are supported:

      • Intrinsic Functions (1 ITR 0,1)
      • Debug (1 DEB 0,2)
      • Segmentation (2 SEG 0,2)

      The following optional modules of the standard are not supported:

      • Communications
      • Debug (2 DEB 0,2)
    • ANSI INCITS 1989-2002 (R2013), Information technology - Programming languages COBOL (partial support)
  • International Reference Version of ISO/IEC 646, 7-Bit Coded Character Set for Information Interchange
  • The 7-bit coded character set defined in American National Standard X3.4-1977, Code for Information Interchange

Enterprise COBOL has the following restrictions related to COBOL standards:

  • OPEN EXTEND is not supported for ASCII-encoded tapes (CODE-SET STANDARD-1 or STANDARD-2).
  • File status 97 is an informational file status value that represents successful completion of an OPEN statement, rather than an unsuccessful completion as is normally the case for 9x file status values in the 85 COBOL Standard.

See Option settings for 85 COBOL Standard conformance in the Enterprise COBOL Programming Guide for specification of the compiler options and Language Environment® runtime options that are required to support the above standards.