Understanding the COBOL Conversion Utility

As delivered, PeopleSoft COBOL programs are configured to run only on non-Unicode databases. To run the PeopleSoft-delivered COBOL on a Unicode database, it first must be converted by using the PeopleTools COBOL conversion utility. This utility is typically called automatically by the PeopleSoft installation process; however in certain circumstances, such as when you adapt COBOL code or apply a PeopleSoft-provided patch to a COBOL program, you may need to run the COBOL conversion utility manually.

Moving to a COBOL Unicode environment means that character data can potentially require three times the storage space that is required in a single-character environment. To allow for this, all internal data definitions for character-type data in COBOL programs must be expanded to allow for three times as many bytes.

Adapt and apply patches to only one set of COBOL source code—non-Unicode source. It is much easier to write COBOL programs without having to remember to triple the size of your working storage as you go. Once your adaptation or patch is complete and you are ready to compile the program, first run it through the COBOL conversion utility, then compile it. This approach has several benefits over customizing the converted code:

• You maintain a single source tree for all of your COBOL—the non-Unicode source.

  This way you don’t run the risk of accidentally adapting both the non-Unicode COBOL programs and the Unicode-converted COBOL programs and potentially losing the modifications to the converted programs the next time you run the converter.

• Although PeopleSoft developers test all delivered COBOL programs and patches in both Unicode and non-Unicode environments, only non-Unicode versions of the source are delivered.

  Therefore, any time you apply a PeopleSoft COBOL patch to a Unicode system, the patched source code must be run through the COBOL converter. If you had already modified the post-converted source, the reconversion would obliterate your modifications.

If the COBOL conversion utility makes modifications to your code that are undesirable, instead of modifying the postconverted code, the PeopleSoft system provides a series of directives to the utility that can tell it how specific lines of code should (or should not be) converted. This enables you to limit your changes only to the nonconverted code and to make the conversion completely automated.

In a non-Unicode (also known as ANSI) implementation, 1 character typically occupies one byte of storage. So for a 10-character field, you can define a PICTURE clause of PIC X(10). In a Unicode implementation, however, you must allow for the maximum number of storage bytes that are required for any character field. Therefore, in the Unicode environment, you must define this same 10-character field with a PICTURE clause of PIC X(30).

To accommodate the number of bytes in the UTF-8 encoding scheme, the PeopleSoft system provides a COBOL conversion utility to expand the character fields in the working storage.