Will OS/VS COBOL modules continue to execute after COBOL 5?



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Will OS/VS COBOL modules continue to execute after COBOL 5?

Postby Manoj Bhaskaran » Sat Jan 03, 2015 1:24 am

I will preface my question by saying that I have not done any COBOL coding for upwards of 10 years, so please do bear with me if I am ignorant of things that I should know.

Our team has a bunch of panels that are used for DB2 utility JCL generation and similar activities. Recently, while invoking these panels, we started receiving the following message (though the panels still work fine):

IGZ0268W An invocation was made of OS/VS COBOL program XXXXXXXX.


On investigating the reason for these messages, I came to know that our shop is slated to migrate to Enterprise COBOL 5.1 later this year, and these messages are in preparation for that migration so that OS/VS COBOL programs can be migrated to Enterprise COBOL where required. Since these are not production programs, but only used within our team, if any migration is required we will have to do it ourselves even though we do not have any COBOL programmers. However, these panels are not critical for our work, they are just nice to have, and if it is too much effort which we cannot handle, we may just abandon these panels.

These programs were written around 1994 and we no longer have the source code for them. So any recompiles are needed, then I am out of luck. The load modules have module ISPLINK link-edited into them and from what we are doing, mostly it should be calling DISPLAY PANEL and file tailoring services.

I did get hold of the migration guide and try to read through it, but I still do not have clarity on a few points.

1. Will these programs continue to execute after our the COBOL 5 migration?

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledge ... ch206.html seems to indicate that OS/VS COBOL programs need not be recompiled as long as they are running under the LE Runtime and do not interoperate with Enterprise COBOL 5 programs. Is my reading correct? In our case, the programs would not interoperate with any Enterprise COBOL 5 programs.

They probably do not use the LE runtime, but I read this material: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledge ... ch203.html as saying that only a link-edit will be required, not a recompile. It refers to the COBOL V4R2 Compiler and Runtime Migration Guide (http://publibfp.dhe.ibm.com/epubs/pdf/igy3mg50.pdf) for instructions on how to migrate to using the LE runtime environment.

From a cursory reading of that guide, it looks like a lot depends on whether the RES or NORES compile option was used.

2. Is there any way to determine this compile option without having the source/compile listing?

Per Page 65 ("OS/VS COBOL programs in more than one enclave"), the programs have to be upgraded if compiled with RES and calling ISPLINK.

3. Will we need to convert our load libraries to PDSEs even if no recompile or re-link-edit is required? If yes, I am assuming a simple IEBCOPY will do.

Apologies for the longish message.
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Re: Will OS/VS COBOL modules continue to execute after COBOL

Postby BillyBoyo » Sat Jan 03, 2015 1:43 am

1. Yes, since you state they will not interact with COBOL V5 programs.

Your programs are using Language Environment, so you have no worries there. The message you refer to is:

IGZ0268W

z/OS Language Environment Runtime Messages
SA38-0686-01

IGZ0268W
An invocation was made of OS/VS COBOL program program-name.
Explanation

An invocation of an OS/VS COBOL program was made. OS/VS COBOL programs cannot interoperate with Enterprise COBOL V5 programs. In addition, IBM may remove support for OS/VS COBOL programs from Language Environment in the future. Therefore, users need to know if they are using OS/VS COBOL programs and what the program names are.
System action

No system action was taken.
Programmer response

Recompile the OS/VS COBOL program with a newer compiler.


2. I don't think you need to know. The answer may be Yes. Need to check.

3. No. You won't need to, unless there will be V5 programs there as well, in which case you'd have to. PDSEs are much better than PDSs and I don't know of any drawback in changing anyway, other than the work to achieveme it. Yes, IEBCOPY should be fine.

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