Created On:  16 February 2011

Problem:

After installing Net Express 5.1 WrapPack 5 a compiler error is displayed for a Dialog System application that used to compile without error.

The error is:

COBCH0666S Reserved word used as data name or unknown data description qualifier  :
 
and points to a copyfile (.cpb) which was generated by Dialog System that contains the following:

          03 FUNCTION-DATA.
             05 WINDOW-HANDLE                PIC x(4) COMP-5.
             05 OBJECT-REFERENCE OBJECT REFERENCE.          *>Error points to this data item.
             05 CALL-FUNCTION                PIC X(30).
             05 NUMERIC-VALUE                PIC x(4) COMP-5.
             05 NUMERIC-VALUE2               PIC x(4) COMP-5.
             05 SIZE-WIDTH                   PIC x(4) COMP-5.
             05 SIZE-HEIGHT                  PIC x(4) COMP-5.
             05 POSITION-X                   PIC x(4) COMP-5.
             05 POSITION-Y                   PIC x(4) COMP-5.
             05 IO-TEXT-BUFFER               PIC X(256).
             05 IO-TEXT-BUFFER2              PIC X(256).

Resolution:

The problem is caused by the addition of a new reserved word to COBOL, OBJECT-REFERENCE. Dialog System uses this word as a data item in it's generated copyfiles when ActiveX controls or controls requiring a control program are being used in the screenset.

OBJECT-REFERENCE was added by the ISO2002 COBOL standard to be the name of a data category in the INITIALIZE statement.
Micro Focus has implemented this new feature in Net Express 5.1 wrappack 5.

To allow the application to compile without errors as it did before you will need to set the following compiler directive when compiling the program:

     REMOVE"OBJECT-REFERENCE"

This directive tells the compiler to remove the word OBJECT-REFERENCE from the reserved word list so that it can be used as a user-defined word.
Incident #2502339