With the withdrawal of support for VS COBOL II on March 31, 2001, IBM made clear its intention to consolidate support for the COBOL language into the LE COBOL compilers: COBOL for MVS, COBOL for OS/390 and, most recently COBOL for z/OS and OS/390. This decision raised the question of how long installations could continue to maintain pre-LE compiled programs, albeit unsupported.

IBM's continued support of OS/VS COBOL and VS COBOL II load modules under the LE runtime gave installations a method of maintaining their COBOL status quo while upgrading their operating system components to current level. This is now changing. IBM has withdrawn service support for all pre-Language Environment compilers.

The announcement for CICS Transaction Server for z/OS Version 2 Release 1 contains the IBM statement of direction to inform the CICS community of its intention to withdraw from CICS all support for non-Language Environment-conforming compilers. This removal of support is directed initially at application preparation only. Run-time support remains in CICS Transaction Server for z/OS Version 2 Release 2 for migration of existing applications, but will be removed in the next release.

Following is a summary of the level of COBOL support for the various versions of CICS Transaction Server. The IBM document information and pertinent sections are included:

• Supports COBOL II and above
• Also supports OS/VS COBOL, but recommends migration to a supported release of COBOL
• Possible run time issues (storage protection exceptions) with OS/VS COBOL load modules documented if migrating from a pre-CICS/ESA 3.3 environment

Relevant Documentation:

• CICS Transaction Server for OS/390 V1R1 Migration Guide
  (Document Number GC33-1571-00)
• Section 2.9.1.1: Compilers and Assemblers
• Section 2.9.1.1.3: Execution-time Support for Unsupported COBOL Compilers
• CICS Transaction Server for OS/390 V1R3 Release Guide
  (Document Number GC34-5352-32)
• Section 7.1.9: Programming Languages
• Section 5.1.2.3: Continued Support for old COBOL Compilers

• Supports COBOL/370 and above (not OS/VS COBOL or COBOL II) for translations/compiles (new development)
• Provides run time support only for existing OS/VS COBOL & COBOL II load modules (but no application program development support).
• Run time support will be removed in the next release.

Relevant Documentation:

• CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V2R2 Release Guide
  (Document Number GC34-5983-00)
• Section titled Programming Languages