In general, you can expect portable
COBOL programs to behave the same way on the
AIX workstation as
they do on the mainframe.
However, be aware of the differences in
file-status values used in I/O processing.
If your program responds to file-status data items, be
concerned with two issues, depending on whether the program is
written to respond to the first or the second file-status data item:
- If your program responds to the first file-status data item (data-name-1),
be aware that values returned in the 9n range depend on the platform.
If your program relies
on the interpretation of a particular 9n value
(for example, 97), do not expect the value to
have the same meaning on the
workstation that it has on the mainframe.
Instead, revise your
program so that it responds to any 9n value as a generic I/O failure.
- If your program responds to the second file-status data item (data-name-8),
be aware that the values returned depend on both the platform and file system.
For example, the STL file system returns values with a different record structure on
the workstation than the VSAM file system does on the mainframe.
If your program relies on the
interpretation of the second file-status data item, the program is probably
not portable.