IBM Announcement - Enterprise Cobol for z/OS V4.2

Almost two years after Enterprise Cobol for z/OS V4.1 IBM yesterday announced 'IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS, V4.2 (ZP09-0281)'. It becomes available on August 28, 2009. Emphasis is on enhancements to XML parsing and usablility improvements.

The highlights

• Further enhancements to XML parsing using the z/OS XML System Services parser
• A new facility that lets users customize message severity
• A new compiler option, BLOCK0, lets programs take advantage of system-determined block size for QSAM output files
• COBOL user-defined words such as data names and program names can now include the underscore character (_)
• Compiler listings display CICS options in effect
• Enterprise COBOL applications using object-oriented syntax for Java interoperability can now run with Java 5 or Java 6

Enterprise Cobol V4.2 requires z/OS 1.9 or later.

Customers running on earlier versions should know that V3.3 was End of Support as of April 30, 2007. The versions 3.4 and 4.1 haven't been given an End of Support date yet.