Problem:

When passing Varchar field as Input parameter into Stored Procedure, the field contains unreadable characters and the length field of the varchar field contains some unpredictable number. Here is the example:

Input parm VARCHAR 300.

IN Cobol Program defined as:

01 LS-INPUT.

   49 LS-INPUT-LEN        PIC S9(4) COMP.

   49 LS-INPUT-TEXT      PIC X(300).

When entering value 'TESTING' from DB2 development center to run this stored procedure, on the back-end program we are getting 'TESTING......' in the LS-INPUT-TEXT,  where '.....' are some unreadable values. And the LS-INPUT-LEN has some large number.

Create Procedure looks like this:

CREATE PROCEDURE FCDT040

(IN  INQ_EXE_ID  DEC(8,0),

  IN ORDBY_COLS  VARCHAR(300),

  IN USER_ID CHAR(30),

  OUT SQLCD    INT,

  OUT MSGOUT VARCHAR(100)      )

  DYNAMIC RESULT SETS 0

  LANGUAGE COBOL

  PARAMETER STYLE GENERAL WITH NULLS

  NO DBINFO

  FENCED

  NOT THREADSAFE

  MODIFIES SQL DATA

  PROGRAM TYPE SUB

  EXTERNAL NAME 'FCDT040!FCDT040';

Resolution:

The linkage definition of LS-INPUT-LEN needs to be defined as COMP-5.  DB2 UDB will pass the value in that format.  If you define the value as COMP, it will look like a very large value because of bit swapping.