Question regarding COBOL and XPLINK option on MVS z/OS 1.3

[john.small@...248]

Greetings,

My name is John Small; I am a software engineer at Ascential Software in Westboro, Massachusetts.  We are using ICU DLL's for some internationalization coding, and we have run into a problem integrating COBOL and C modules with ICU DLL's.

The platform we are working on is MVS z/OS 1.3 on a P390 box.

We statically linked our C object modules (which have calls to ICU functions that reside in DLLs) to our driver programs. The C object modules were compiled for non-XPLINK run-time. The ICU DLL's were built using ICU-provided scripts in our USS environment with OS390BATCH set to 1. The ICU DLL's seem to be compiled and linked for XPLINK/run-time enabled.

When we link our C driver program with our C object module, the run-time option of XPLINK(ON) needs to be provided on the command line for the code to work. Example: at run-time, our JCL's EXEC statement must have the XPLINK(ON) command line PARM:

      //STEP005   PGM=TSTXPC,PARM='XPLINK(ON)/ -i DD:INDATA -o DD:OUTDATA'

However, when we use a COBOL driver program, the XPLINK(ON) command line parm cannot be provided and causes a run-time system error.

How should we compile and link our COBOL driver programs to use ICU DLL's?

Is there a way to build ICU for non-XPLINK run-time?

Thanks very much,

John Small
Software Development Engineer
Ascential Software Corp.
50 Washington Street
2nd Floor
Westboro, MA 01581
T: 508-366-3888 x3305
F: 508-389-8769
john.small@...248...
www.ascentialsoftware.com