<snip> No, that is not what I meant. It goes back to this: "[ABO] ... produces a functionally equivalent executable program", which is a claim somewhere within the ABO site. OK, I can see a search-box at the top of my screen (sorry, "page"). It is in the User's Guide for ABO.
That is either some snake-oil marketing-speak, or something underlies it. I assumed the latter, and that now seems to be borne out by further research. To me it amounts to "we can show that the program we produce, works in the same way as the program we started with, it just does it differently". This is a very different thing from the mythical program which can test any given program. </snip> I cannot agree. That sort of statement in marketing material that I know of (my knowledge of such material is admittedly very limited) amounts to "that is our intent; if that is not the case then we will consider that a bug that we may fix". <snip> My interpretation is this: "If the program is written in such a way that it complies with what is explicitly documented for the version of Enterprise COBOL that the program was last compiled with, that documentation being the appropriate Language Reference, Programming Guide and Migration Guide, and that all the data referenced by the given program "complies with its PICture", then that will work in an identical manner with Enterprise COBOL V5+." </snip> And that sounds to me like the intent of the product. And when the intent is not met, it is a bug that we may fix. You seem to be looking for a guarantee of program correctness. If I am correct, a vendor (including IBM) cannot in ordinary circumstances offer that; they/we can offer only a warranty that defects will be dealt with. Peter Relson z/OS Core Technology Design ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
