COBOL's awareness of system around it?

gehang · New User Joined: 10 Dec 2010 Posts: 10 Location: Chicago

Hello,

I poked around a bit on here and google but I coudln't find quite what I was looking for, maybe someone can point me the right way.

I have several cobol programs that create reports and all of them check PCB parameters for their enviornment data (is it running from test or production?).

My problem is that I have one program that uses no PCBs, no ims calls. I'm trying to find a possible enviornment variables that I could use to findout where my program is running. I wasn't sure if COBOL is as self aware as IMS is.

Unfortunately modifying the JCL or adding a dummy PCB are not going to work. If it can't be done in cobol I'm going to have to live without it.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

dbzTHEdinosauer · Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 5:48 pm

your understanding of the systems (based on your comments)
is the reason (cause of your inability) you can't figure out how to do this.

all of us, at our sites, know the names 'tokens' used by the ops-system and
the sub-systems (db2, ims, MQSerious)
to determine what,where you are.

to say that ims is aware, is a silly statement.
the only reason that you know if you are in prod, test, qa, etc...
is due to the token used.
and each of these subsystems (ims, db2, etc...) has an API to return the token to the user.
Thus the user could know where he is based on the token.

The only thing that comes to mind,
and is not dependent on a sub-system defintion
is LPAR

i would suggest thinking on the lpar level, those are all different,
and they are retrievable via COBOL, one example is here, at the bottom of the page

Bill Woodger · Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 5:50 pm

Do you have any "symbols" in JCL which indicate test/production (like elements of any dataset names). These you could look at passing to the Cobol program as a PARM,

PeterHolland · Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 9:43 pm

This is again a load of crap. Does the TS know what it is talking about?
No PCB? Once in a while a PCB? Half a PCB?

Marso · Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 2:55 am

Follow the links in this thread: Capturing the JOBNAME in COBOL program.
Once you have the job name or other job info, you can recognize where you are.

Bill O'Boyle · Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 4:05 am

Programmatically detect the run environment; CICS or Batch, using CICS Macro DFHAFCD -

www.ibmmainframes.com/viewtopic.php?p=116520&highlight=#116520

One minor change to the above sub-program; Replace R12 with R3 as the Base-Register.

Bill O'Boyle · Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 6:51 am

If Assembler gives management the hives, review LE Callable Service routine CEE3INF, which was introduced with z/OS 1.9 -

CEE3INF Link

In fact, CEE3INF returns much more information and could be used programmatically to provide much more than just the run-environment.

Please review the above link....