Chicago-Soft
ATTN: TSO Times
One Maple Street
Hanover, NH 03755
(603) 643-4002
information
@tsotimes.com

Year 2000 Help on the Way
IBM Adds Functionality to COBOL Environment

by Olivia R. Carmandi and David Shelby Kirk

If your shop, like so many others, is struggling under the burden of making your applications year 2000-compliant, some help is on the way. Those of us coping with the situation have been constrained by a shortfall of 8-digit date facilities within the software itself and that constraint is now ended. IBM has added new functionality to their premier COBOL environment, COBOL for MVS (OS/390). These enhancements are in a two-step delivery.

Enhancements to the ACCEPT verb, plus new intrinsic functions to address date windowing, are already available. A further enhancement, Millennium Language Extensions (MLE), is also available. It is important to note that COBOL II is not year 2000-compliant and there are no plans from IBM to upgrade that product.

New ACCEPT and Intrinsic Functions. These new ACCEPT options, as well as the new intrinsic functions, are being implemented as part of the upgrades to IBM's COBOL for MVS (OS/390) & VM and were not documented in original manuals. These new facilities include enhanced intrinsic functions to support management of 6-digit dates in an 8-digit world and a long needed enhancement to the ACCEPT verb to show 4 digits of the year.

Combining these new features with existing COBOL intrinsic functions and Language Environment date services should put you well ahead in solving your date-related logic components as you wrestle with the year 2000.

Millennium Language Extensions. The Millennium Language extensions (MLE), may prove to be the long-awaited 'year 2000 silver bullet' we have hoped for. Why? Because with MLE there are NO CHANGES needed to procedural code. While the above-mentioned intrinsic functions are certainly powerful and give extensive control to the programmer, MLE automates all date-specific logic, making use of MLE, a strategic element in your COBOL migration strategy.

Is there a weakness to MLE? Well, yes and no. While the date-windowing provided by the intrinsic functions are rolling windows, MLE's date-windowing is not. The base year is specified at compile time so it doesn't roll. On the other hand, using MLE gives you so many years to revisit your application that this shouldn't be a problem for most businesses.

Conclusion. While the enhancements to COBOL are far-reaching and powerful, they're still no replacement for starting the year 2000 migration as early as possible. They don't replace or eliminate the need to carefully review applications and to decide which tool is best for a given application. They also do not eliminate the need for extensive testing to ensure they work properly for your application.

To be assured that your applications will work as the millenium approaches your year 2000 testing should include:

1. Educating your group on how to test their applications.
2. Creating a feasible test plan.
3. Using tools to help create your test environment, develop test cases and execute the tests.
4. Developing a baseline to compare your test results against.
5. Performing automated regression testing.

Condensed and reprinted with permission of MVS Training, Inc.

About the Authors: Olivia R. Carmandi is president of MVS Training, Inc. The company helps clients optimize their people's programming and systems administration skills by providing customized on-site mainframe training --specialists in COBOL, NEW OFFERING --public workshops, (800) 356-9093, ocarmandi@mvs-training.com. Visit our web site -- www.mvs-training.com

David Shelby Kirk , an outstanding expert in the field, is a successful author and consultant. His newest book "COBOL for OS/390 Power Programming with Complete Year 2000 Section" is now available to own call, (800) 356-9093, dkirk@mvs-training.com

home · current articles · archives · forums ·
· subscribe · about us · contact us · links