Amdahl COBOL Language

Amdahl COBOL Components

Amdahl COBOL is a comprehensive set of tools for developing, testing, debugging, and maintaining business applications. The base Amdahl COBOL product consists of:

Large-scale business application development

Amdahl COBOL for the UTS(R) system, based on Micro Focus COBOL for UNIX(R) systems, delivers the ideal client/server production platform on a mainframe for large-scale, mission-critical business applications.

Product highlights

Amdahl COBOL language products for the UTS system are a complete compiler package for high-performance COBOL applications development. These products support the highest level of ANSI standard COBOL syntax along with many other syntax dialects, including those of IBM's mainframe COBOL compilers. The Amdahl COBOL language products are members in Amdahl's growing family of A+Performance Engineered(TM) products.

Product features

Amdahl COBOL language for the UTS system, along with the optional Amdahl COBOL Toolbox, Amdahl COBOL Dialog System, and Operating System Extensions (OSX) features, deliver a high-performance COBOL environment for mission-critical business applications.

Running on System/390-compatible processors with the UTS operating system, Amdahl COBOL enables enterprises with large investments in COBOL business applications to enjoy the flexibility of a large-scale open systems environment. Amdahl COBOL provides a migration path for COBOL applications from minicomputer, microcomputer, and proprietary mainframes.

Amdahl COBOL is based on the popular Micro Focus COBOL v3.1 for UNIX systems. Amdahl COBOL provides all the features and functionality of that product plus unique enhancements required for high performance, high capacity applications.

Amdahl enhancements

New COBOL application development paradigm

As enterprises introduce open systems and client/server environments into their information management solutions, the requirement for application portability and compatibility across multiple environments increases. Amdahl COBOL products offer the flexibility to solve these requirements in several ways.

Migration from proprietary mainframe environments. Customers with large investments in COBOL business applications want to leverage their existing investments and take advantage of the portability of open systems to meet their future business needs. Amdahl COBOL for the UTS system provides the means to migrate from a proprietary to a distributed open environment using existing information technology resources. If appropriate, these COBOL applications can be distributed later to a variety of platforms in the enterprise for local operation.

Centralized management for distributed computing. Amdahl COBOL for the UTS system offers a secure data center environment for critical applications. Enterprises can develop and maintain distributed business applications under a single point of control, providing improved operations management and reusability of applications source code. Application development and maintenance tasks can be offloaded to the desktop, yet application source code can be kept under centralized control. Source files and test data are available to developers from either desktop or mainframe platforms. Compatibility is assured due to identical tools in both environments.

Centralized mini computer consolidation. Amdahl COBOL offers a robust data center environment for mission-critical applications with the required scalability for consolidation of COBOL work-load from smaller computing platforms. Consolidations are greatly simplified through support of popular COBOL dialects. The result is reduced operational costs and preservation of existing skill sets and computing resources when migrating from proprietary mini computer systems.

Large-scale application development. Amdahl COBOL for the UTS system gives programmers the capacity and performance they need to develop large business applications rapidly for an open system environment. The high I/O capacity and large-scale processing power of the UTS system enables fast execution of the generated applications during testing and provides an ideal platform for large production workloads.
COBOL applications that are developed, maintained, and executed under the UTS system take full advantage of all UTS system capabilities.

Standard COBOL utilities

The Amdahl COBOL product contains various features and utilities in addition to the language compiler. Major capabilities include:

ANIMATOR. This unique utility for visual program analysis improves debugging productivity. ANIMATOR displays the source code of a program on screen while it is executing. Programs may be animated completely or partially, one step at a time, continuously, or at variable speeds. Programmers can toggle between screens displaying source code and execution results for improved analysis.

FORMS-2. This utility provides a powerful visual programming tool for the generation of interactive screen-handling programs. It allows the programmer to use the keyboard to paint a form directly on the screen, exactly as it will appear to the user at run time. COBOL source code is generated automatically from FORMS-2, and included in the application program.

Run Time System (RTS). This key component of Amdahl COBOL operates as the gateway between COBOL applications and UTS system services. The RTS permits execution of Amdahl COBOL modules in both an intermediate format and a compiled format. It conserves execution memory through dynamic loading and execution of modules. The RTS also uses environment variables for execution-time mapping of file names.

Optional COBOL tools and utilities

Amdahl COBOL Toolbox. Amdahl COBOL Toolbox is an integrated and closely coupled collection of programmer productivity aids and utilities distributed as an add-on product to the base Amdahl COBOL product. These tools facilitate the development process, ease application distribution, and help create suitable target environments for application systems. Amdahl COBOL Toolbox is especially useful for developing portable applications and applications designed for use on homogeneous and heterogeneous networks.

Features include:

Amdahl COBOL Dialog System. This product is a complete user interface management system, enabling developers to prototype and create character-based user interfaces for a wide variety of operating systems. Its architecture makes it particularly suitable for use in client/server applications.

Amdahl COBOL Dialog System separates details of the user interface from the underlying business application logic. This allows the user interface to grow and evolve without requiring changes to the program. Amdahl COBOL Dialog System is designed to be used by developers with no knowledge of user interface programming APIs.

Amdahl COBOL Operating System Extensions (OSX).

This feature provides a common base of operating facilities across multiple operating systems. Its purpose is to provide a "level playing field" for application portability, regardless of the operating systems on which the applications run. OSX includes the COBOL Run Time System, common programming APIs for communication, presentation, data access, and more.

Amdahl enhancements

64-bit file addressing. Amdahl has modified the filehandler (mFFH) in RTS to address files larger than 2 gigabyte size. All other existing functions work in exactly the same manner. The difference is that with Amdahl COBOL the file size will be increased to a 64-bit field.

Existing programs binaries can access the new 64-bit files when used with the new RTS. Re-compiled programs can access the old 32-bit format files and 64-bit format files. As all access will be via mFFH in the RTS, the indexed file format will be automatically detected and handled accordingly.

Tape handling enhancements. New with this release, Amdahl COBOL supports use of the MULTIPLE REEL clause for I/O operations to tape. The COBOL RTS will recognize and read, as well as write, standard IBM tape labels.

With this tape handling enhancement, the user will be able to read and write tapes that can be exchanged with any platform or operating system that recognizes IBM standard labels.

Accelerated sort routine. Amdahl has improved the sort algorithm in Micro Focus COBOL and optimized it for the System/390 architecture. This gives applications developed with Amdahl COBOL the ability to sort data files up to 25 times faster than applications developed with the standard sort routine.

Linkage to C programs. Amdahl has extended the standard Micro Focus inter-language calling facilities to handle the UTS system APIs.

Interface capabilities include:

As a result, Amdahl COBOL programs have direct access to unique UTS system resources enabling the efficient mixing of business and system operations in a single application program.

Standards Conformance

To ensure that applications can be ported across different platforms, Amdahl COBOL conforms to these standards: Amdahl COBOL also supports the following popular syntax dialects:

Portability

Amdahl COBOL generates an intermediate level of code that is fully portable across more than 500 platforms. Portability can be both at the source level using one of the standard supported syntax dialects, or at the object level using intermediate (.int) object code, which can be created in one environment and run on all other environments using vendor-supplied Micro Focus COBOL Run Time Systems for the target platforms.

Native machine code can be created in all environments from the portable intermediate code. The native machine code has the advantage that it executes optimally for that environment.

SQL support

Amdahl COBOL works with the following databases: Embedded SQL preprocessors can be obtained from the RDBMS vendors.

Benefits

Use of Amdahl COBOL language products and the UTS system provides standard APIs for cross-platform development; support for large, high-performance databases for customers who value capacity, reliability, and availability; and centralized file services. Amdahl COBOL and the UTS system meet the challenges of bringing computing resources closer to the end-user while integrating legacy systems with new technologies.

Additional Information

Support and Service. Amdahl COBOL products are fully supported by Amdahl's highly rated Customer Service Organization. Central Site support is included in the license fee. Periodic maintenance updates are provided at no additional charge to licensed users of record at the time of update.

Pricing. Amdahl COBOL products are offered as optional, separately priced features. To obtain prices, terms and conditions, or additional information about these products, contact your local Amdahl representative


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The information in this document may be superseded by subsequent documents. For details regarding delivery of specific products, features, and services, contact your local Amdahl representative.
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