Accessing Data in a Canceled Program

On the mainframe, a COBOL program can continue to use the data defined in the Data Division of a subprogram even after that subprogram has been canceled. This facility has been emulated in Enterprise Developer, although we do not recommend it as good practice.

You can enable this facility by using the mfpm_access_cancelled_data tunable.

Before the subprogram is canceled, you should set pointer variables in the calling program to the addresses of the data in the subprogram that you want to continue to use. Then, after the subprogram is canceled, you can continue to use that data until Enterprise Developer releases the Working-Storage Section of the canceled subprogram. This can occur if:

• There is insufficient storage available to satisfy a new storage request
• The canceled subprogram is reloaded. In this case, the old Working-Storage area is released and a new area allocated and initialized.
• The application terminates

Any attempt to use a pointer variable that still points to a released Working-Storage area will have unpredictable results.