Problem:

Does MFEEE support  Enterprise COBOL 3.4?  For example  Enterprise COBOL 3.4 increases the maximum data item size from 16 to 128 MB.

Resolution:

Here are the details of support added at each Enterprise Cobol level, at the end you can see what we do and don't support for 3.4

IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS and OS/390, Version 3 Release 1

o     Basic XML support, including a high-speed XML parser that allows programs to consume inbound XML messages, verify that they are well formed, and transform their contents into COBOL data structures; (ie XML PARSE)

o     Basic support for Unicode provided by NATIONAL data type and national (N, NX) literals, intrinsic functions DISPLAY-OF and NATIONAL-OF for character conversions, and compiler option NSYMBOL.

o Compiler option NSYMBOL to control whether national or DBCS processing should be in effect for literals and data items that use the N symbol

IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS and OS/390, Version 3 Release 2

o     No major compiler features added. (New features of Debug tool and enhanced Java interoperability.)

IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS, Version 3 Release 3

o     XML support has been enhanced. A new statement, XML GENERATE, converts

the content of COBOL data records to XML format.

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

These have been implemented ...

o       Several limits on COBOL data-item size have been significantly raised,

for example:

o  The maximum data-item size has been raised from 16 MB to 128 MB.

o  The maximum PICTURE symbol replication has been raised to

134,217,727.

o  The maximum OCCURS integer has been raised to 134,217,727.

o     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

These have NOT been implemented ...

o       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:

o  External decimal (national decimal) items

o  External floating-point (national floating-point) items

o  Numeric-edited items

o  National-edited items

o  Group (national group) items, supported by the GROUP-USAGE

NATIONAL clause

o       Many COBOL language elements support the new kinds of UTF-16 data, or

newly support the processing of national data:

o  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 .

o  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 .

o  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.

o  The NUMVAL and NUMVAL-C intrinsic functions can take a national

literal or national data item as an argument.