COBOL V5.2 Was Announced! What's New?

Project and Program: Application Architecture Development and Integration, LE and Programming Languages

Tags: Proceedings, 2015, SHARE in Seattle 2015

Enterprise COBOL for z/OS V5.2 provides day 1 support for the new z processor. Besides the ability to generate new z13 instructions, this new compiler also has abilities to use the new Vector Facility for certain COBOL statements, and expand usage of Decimal Floating Point Facility for Packed Decimal calculations. Enterprise COBOL V5.2 provides significant performance improvements over the GA release of Enterprise COBOL V5.1. Well-structured, compute intensive batch applications running on z13 (compiled with Enterprise COBOL V5.2) have shown CPU time reduction of up to 14% over the same applications running on zEC12 (compiled with GA release of Enterprise COBOL V5.1).
Enterprise COBOL V5.2 has improved compatibility with Enterprise COBOL V3 and V4.  It contains all compatibility features delivered in the PTF stream of Enterprise COBOL V5.1 (e.g. AMODE 24, XMLPARSE(COMPAT), VLR(COMPAT), ZONEDATA(MIG), and MAP(HEX)).
Enterprise COBOL V5.2 also has many new features to improve programmability, developer productivity, and application modernization. It provides COBOL applications access to new z/OS JSON services. JSON is a lightweight data exchange format. It is becoming more popular with mobile applications. Supporting JSON will provide mobile (i.e. system of engagement) applications easy access to data and the processing they need from business critical enterprise (i.e. system of record) applications that are written in COBOL. Other new features include COBOL 2002 language features; new compiler options to help programmers write better code; enhanced suppress capabilities for XML GENERATE…-Tom M. Ross-IBM Corporation

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