Friday, February 15, 2008

Enterprise Cobol for z/OS V4 : correction

I talked about IBM Enterprise Cobol V4 some time ago and I mentioned there was an IPLA alternative for the Debugging Functions that can no longer be found in Cobol V4 which is compiler only.
In fact there are two alternatives. I forgot to mention the first and most obvious one. It's also MLC software en it just replaces the debugging functions that were up to now in the full function edition : IBM Debug Tool for z/OS V8.1 (5655-S17). On the other hand you have the IPLA software I mentioned before : Debug Tool Utilities and Advanced Functions V8.1 (5655-S16 – S&S 5655-J19). It's part of the Problem Determination Tools suite but it can be ordered separately. It also has some extra functionalities : CICS-related enhancements, automonitor enhancements, 64-bit register support for Assembler applications . . .
Take a good look at the price before ordering one of them. Even if you don't want the extra functionalities and there's a higher One Time Cost for the IPLA software, in the long run it might turn out to be more cost efficient (read : cheaper).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It should also be noted that many shops have (usually older) compilers "with Debug." If you order Debug Tool (MLC) or Debug Tool Utilities and Advanced Functions (OTC), you should stop paying for the "with Debug" compilers and switch to the "without Debug" version. In fact, you should not pay for any more than one "with Debug" compiler anyway, unless you have something a little out of the ordinary like licensing different compilers to different systems. If you are, you're paying for Debug Tool multiple times.

Marc Wambeke said...

You're absolutely right. And I'm also sure lots of shops are paying versions "with debug" ... and using other tools for debugging. So they could also save money by switching to the 'compiler only' version.