This won’t mean much too many of you.

This week, IBM delivered COBOL for AIX V3.1, which sports 64-bit application development alongside the older 32-bit mode that was still the way to code COBOL apps on AIX back in 2004, when COBOL for AIX V2 was launched. (Back then, with V2, IBM added a Java-like, object-oriented syntax to COBOL and support for XML and its own DB2 8 database, which were in their own ways a big deal.)

The V3.1 release of COBOL for AIX now supports VSAM and STL files (these are flatfile formats that predate relational databases that are still commonly used for COBOL applications), but also includes a V2 compatibility mode for smaller STL and VSAM file so customers don’t have to recompile legacy COBOL applications even if they do want to use larger files with new – yes, new – COBOL applications. Source: The Register.

Crumbs, sadly I thought COBOL was pretty much dead and buried – I say sadly as COBOL was and still is my favourite language, however I never managed to survive the millennium as a COBOL programmer, I now use something called PROGRESS. How I’d relish the chance to return to COBOL – anybody got any COBOL jobs out there?