COBOL 2002

In a previous contribution, I mentioned that only ILE COBOL would support
part of the COBOL 2002 standard. I thought I'd share with you the official
response I received a few months ago from a responsible source within IBM.
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1)  COBOL(ILE) on iSeries doesn't have a solid plan to support the whole
ANSI
2002 standard yet but we've been enhancing the compiler to support some
features in the new standard already e.g. NATIONAL support. The current
thoughts we (COBOL on all platform including pSeries, zSeries & iSeries)
have is to support things that customers really want. Btw, you're not the
first person to ask about the new standard, do you get lots of enquiries
and is it something that will affect sales if we(IBM) don't fully support
it? These will be something that might affect our decision.

For COBOL under Linux, I have the following:

2) Acucorp has an ACU Cobol environment on iSeries Linux. Software
developers can move their existing AUCOBOL-GT applications to Linux for
iSeries without recompilation. We don't have an IBM COBOL compiler for
Linux at this time.
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Also, note the following response I received from Micro Focus:
Micro Focus will be supporting the iSeries using Server Express - using the
iSeries PACE(?) technology. Server Express supports *some* of the 2002 COBOL
but as the standard has not been released there are likely to be changes.
Micro Focus is playing a full role in the standards process. Any changes to
Server Express needed to comply with the final 2002 standard will be made in
due course.

I hope the above will be useful for those interested in COBOL 2002 and/or
COBOL on iSeries Linux.

David Silber



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