MCGEN not needed MetaCOBOL 15.1

Products

• Datacom
• DATACOM - AD
• Datacom/AD
• Datacom/DB

Issue/Introduction

When upgrading to Datacom support for MetaCOBOL 15.1 from  MetaCOBOL+ 1.1. do I need to be concerned with MCGEN to customize translation options for the MCOBOL program? 

Environment

z/OS

Resolution

As documented in the Datacom Core - 15.1 section “Installing Datacom Support for MetaCOBOL for Datacom Sites Not Yet at Version 15.11” 


Post-installation Steps No Longer Needed
The following on-site assembly of the MCGEN macro and DDSRTLM custom settings have been eliminated or re-written:
MCGEN 
CA MetaCOBOL+ used an on-site assembly of the MCGEN macro to set site options. This assembly has been eliminated. The majority of the options could be specified in the pre-compilation step JCL, either as PARM data, or via SYSIN. The exceptions are:

• Date format for the pre-compilation listing is always the international format YEAR/MM/DD, which is unambiguous.
• Block sizes for work files FE and FM are now fixed at half-track.
• Support for CA Librarian and CA Panvalet is always enabled. …”
• ACCT is now set to the default value "ENQ".

DDSRTLM 
CA MetaCOBOL+ required custom settings for the Datadictionary System Resource Table. The DD access has been re-written to remove the need for these changes. It operates with or without them. There is no requirement to revert to default settings.

 

Additional Information

With 1.1, the DATE format was DMY or MDY and was part of the MCGEN customization of the MCOBOL program. 

With 15.1, the DATE format is hard coded as YMD (not DMY or MDY) and cannot be changed. 
So, the customer should scan their user macros for reference to "DATE" and determine if they need to adjust their macros to handle the different format of YMD (YYYYMMDD). If they have a question, they should send in their macro.