Plan ahead when designing new applications

You should consider several factors when designing new applications. Some of these factors are discussed in this section.

Whenever possible:

Use either EBCDIC character or binary control fields
Place binary control fields so they start and end on byte boundaries
Avoid using the alternative collating sequence character translation
If you know that a fixed-point control field always contains positive values, specify it as a binary field.
If you know that a packed decimal or zoned decimal control field always contains positive values with the same sign (for example, X'C'), specify it as a binary field.
Use packed decimal format rather than zoned decimal
If several contiguous character or binary control fields in the correct order of significance are to be sorted or merged in the same order (ascending or descending), specify them as one control field
Avoid overlapping control fields.
Avoid using locale processing if your SORT, MERGE, INCLUDE, or OMIT character fields can be processed using the binary encoding of the data.