Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
You can find some commonly asked questions to help you better understand, use, and maintain Automatic Binary Optimizer for z/OS® (ABO).
System requirements and capabilities for ABO
- What are the minimum hardware requirements for running ABO?
- What are the COBOL compiler versions eligible for ABO optimization?
- What CPU savings should I expect from code that is produced by different versions of COBOL compilers?
- What are the characteristics of applications that will benefit the most from ABO optimization?
- Can I see gains in my batch and online applications?
- Can ABO help if the COBOL source code is no longer available?
- Can ABO handle calls to other programming languages?
- Can ABO handle all OPTIMIZE settings that are used by Enterprise COBOL to generate the original load module?
Obtain ABO and the ABO trial
ABO usage
- How do I know if ABO is installed correctly?
- What is the recommended way to evaluate whether ABO is right for me?
- Can I specify which architecture level that I want ABO to optimize for?
- Do all modules in an application have to be optimized by ABO to see the benefits?
- Can I limit the use of ABO to certain modules or compiled programs?
- Can ABO identify modules that it cannot optimize and show their origins?
- Does ABO support both PDS and PDSE?
- Will the size of the ABO-optimized modules change due to optimization?
- Do ABO-optimized modules still contain the original compilation time stamp and version information?
- Can z/OS tools like AMBLIST and Binder show ABO-optimized CSECTs in modules?
- What level of testing does ABO require?
- Why is less testing required to verify ABO-optimized modules compared to recompiling from source?
- How can I debug modules optimized by ABO?
- If there is an ABEND in an ABO-optimized module, how would the dump be matched back to the original COBOL source code?
- Are there any runtime libraries required to execute the ABO-optimized code?
- Is ABO required to execute ABO-optimized modules?
- Can independent software vendor (ISV) or 3rd party z/OS development tools work with ABO-optimized modules?
- Why do I get an 0C1 abend code when I run my ABO-optimized module?
- How do I measure performance improvements of my COBOL applications after using ABO?
- What performance profiling tools are available to me?
- I've identified a COBOL CPU-intensive application using SMF data and optimized the main program identified in the SMF data. Why am I not seeing good performance gains?
- What is the best way to deploy ABO-optimized modules?
- If I have an ABO-optimized module that interacts with Db2®, do I have to rebind the optimized module before deploying?
Support for ABO
This page includes frequently asked questions related to support for Automatic Binary Optimizer
for z/OS (ABO):
ABO and Enterprise COBOL
- How can ABO help me with COBOL migration?
- What performance improvements can I expect from ABO?
- When should I consider using ABO?
- Is it beneficial to use ABO if my COBOL modules are not compute intensive or if my COBOL modules are only a small portion of my overall modules?
- Can ABO help me with modules compiled by Enterprise COBOL 5 or 6?
- How can ABO improve performance since the ABO optimization consumes a lot of CPU resources?
- Can ABO reduce MLC costs?
- Can ABO help to avoid common Enterprise COBOL 6 migration pitfalls such as invalid data, uninitialized variables, and data item overpopulation?
- What is the difference between Enterprise COBOL and ABO?
- Is ABO just the optimization phase of the Enterprise COBOL 6 compiler?
- Should Enterprise COBOL and ABO be used together?