IBM has announced COBOL for Linux on x86 1.1, bringing IBM's COBOL compilation technologies and capabilities to the Linux on x86 environment.
According to the IBM announcement, COBOL for Linux on x86 can help modernize, integrate, and manage existing applications, data, and skill sets to ease an organization’s transformation into a more flexible business. To connect business components with suppliers, partners, employees, and clients, and to position organizations to quickly take advantage of opportunities and respond to challenges in real time, COBOL for Linux on x86 can help meet these challenges and enable use of existing COBOL code while upgrading applications with the newest technologies.
“COBOL for Linux on x86 1.1 is the latest addition to the IBM COBOL compiler family, which includes Enterprise COBOL for z/OS and COBOL for AIX. COBOL for Linux on x86 is a productive and powerful development environment for building and modernizing COBOL applications. It includes an optimizing COBOL compiler and a COBOL runtime library. COBOL for Linux on x86 is based on the same advanced optimization technology as Enterprise COBOL for z/OS. It offers both performance and programming capabilities for developing business critical COBOL applications for Linux on x86 systems. COBOL for Linux on x86 is designed to support clients on their journey to the cloud. It enables clients to strategically deploy business-critical applications written in COBOL to a hybrid cloud environment or best-fit platforms, which includes IBM Z (z/OS), IBM Power Systems (AIX), and x86 (Linux) platforms.”
In addition, the announcement said, COBOL for Linux on x86 supports the integrated CICS translator to handle native COBOL and embedded CICS statements in a CICS COBOL application. “It enables COBOL batch applications to access VSAM emulated files stored in Db2 and CICS TX SFS. COBOL for Linux on x86 in conjunction with IBM TXSeries for Multiplatforms are compatible with IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS and IBM CICS Transaction Server for z/OS. Minimal customization effort and delivery time are required for strategically deploying COBOL/CICS applications developed for z/OS to Linux on x86 and cloud environments. This solution also provides organizations with the flexibility to move workloads back to IBM Z should performance and throughput requirements increase, or to share business logic and data with CICS Transaction Server for z/OS.”
COBOL for Linux on x86 is also shipped as part of IBM CICS TX on Cloud 11, enabling users to create, maintain, and deploy mission-critical line-of-business CICS COBOL applications on a cloud environment.
COBOL for Linux on x86 1.1 includes the following features and capabilities:
- IBM COBOL optimizing compiler and runtime library for the Linux on x86 environment
- Interoperability with IBM TXSeries for Multiplatforms
- Interoperability with IBM Db2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows
- Unicode support to enable COBOL applications to directly process Unicode data
- Native support for XML, which enables COBOL applications to parse incoming and generate outgoing XML messages
- Compatibility with IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS and IBM COBOL for AIX
- Source conversion utility (scu) to aid in migrating COBOL source code developed with non-IBM COBOL compilers