Release Information for Natural Version 8.4.1

This document covers the following topics:


Installation

System Requirements

The system requirements for the current version of Natural are now listed in the Installation documentation.

Compiler Used to Build Natural

With Natural for Windows Version 8.4.1, a different compiler version was used to build and test Natural: Microsoft Visual Studio 2015. See also Compiler Used to Build Natural in the Installation documentation.

Migrating Applications to Version 8.4

Applications that were created with Natural for Windows Version 3.1 and above can be executed with Version 8.4.

New Features

Statements

The following statements are now available:

Statement Description
READLOB The READLOB statement is used on a single record, where the defined LOB field (Large OBject field) is read in fixed length segments during the loop processing.
UPDATELOB The UPDATELOB statement is used to update a data segment of a LOB field (Large OBject field) in a database record.

Natural Code Coverage

With Natural Version 8.4.1, the code coverage functionality has been introduced. It is now possible to exactly examine the statements of a Natural application that have been executed during a specific run and that have not been executed. Tests can now be improved so that they raise the number of touched statements of a Natural application when executed.

Natural code coverage requires that the Natural sources are cataloged with the subparameter setting COVERAGE=ON of the new GPGEN profile parameter. Refer to the Natural profile parameter GPGEN for further details.

Natural code coverage is activated with the new COVERAGE profile parameter. Refer to the Natural profile parameter COVERAGE for further details.

The coverage data is written to an NCVF (Natural code coverage file) resource file you can analyze with NaturalONE or with the Natural Profiler utility. For more information, see the NaturalONE documentation or the Natural Profiler documentation.

Application Programming Interfaces

The utility SYSEXT provides the following new application programming interfaces (API):

API Description
USR1052N This API offers two new optional parameters offering that the output of the executed command for the operating system (from STDOUT) is returned to the calling program.
USR1069N This API offers a new optional parameter offering that the physical printer name is processed with a length of 256 bytes instead of 80 bytes.
USR8401N This new API reads or writes the dynamic parts (:1:,:2:, ...) of a Natural system or user-defined error message.

Profile Parameters

The following parameters are now available:

Parameter Description
ADAPRM This Natural profile parameter is used to pass Natural session data to Adabas Review within the seventh Adabas buffer.
COVERAGE This Natural profile parameter is used to perform a code coverage of a Natural session.
GPGEN This Natural profile parameter is used to generate specific profiling, code coverage and debugging information which is currently only generated if the corresponding Natural object was compiled with SYMGEN=ON. With the introduction of GPGEN, it is no longer required and not recommended to use the SYMGEN profile parameter.
MAXPREC This Natural profile parameter is used to control Natural's compiler. It determines the maximum number of digits after the decimal point that the Natural compiler generates for results of arithmetic operations.
RI This Natural profile parameter specifies whether ISNs (internal sequence numbers) for records which were read and placed in hold status but were not updated are to be retained in hold status.
YD This Natural profile parameter is used to adjust the current machine date (as read by using the internal machine time) by adding/subtracting a number of years to/from it.

Changes and Enhancements

FIND Statement

The syntax of the FIND statement has been enhanced so that it is now possible to use the SHARED HOLD and SKIP RECORDS clause. Refer to FIND in the Statements documentation for further details.

MOVE ALL Statement

The syntax of the MOVE ALL statement has been enhanced so that it is now possible to use the SUBSTRING clause. Refer to MOVE ALL in the Statements documentation for further details.

READ Statement

The syntax of the READ statement has been enhanced so that it is now possible to use the SHARED HOLD and SKIP RECORDS clause. Refer to READ in the Statements documentation for further details.

READ WORK FILE Statement

The syntax of the READ WORK FILE statement has been enhanced so that it is now possible to use the ADJUST clause. Refer to READ WORK FILE in the Statements documentation for further details.

REINPUT Statement

As already documented in a previous Natural version, the WITH TEXT and the MARK option can now be used to specify control variables as field attributes. Refer to REINPUT in the Statements documentation for further details.

SEPARATE Statement

It is now possible to define an array as the source operand (operand1) to be separated.

The syntax of the SEPARATE statement has been enhanced so that you can now use the STARTING FROM POSITION option and the REMAINDER POSITION clause. Refer to SEPARATE in the Statements documentation for further details.

WRITE WORK FILE Statement

As already documented in a previous Natural version, it is now possible to specify system variables as the fields in operand1 that are to be written to the work file. Refer to WRITE WORK FILE in the Statements documentation for further details.

Natural Configuration Utility

A new category Tools has been added in the NATPARM group of the Natural Configuration Utility. Refer to Overview of Profile Parameters in the Configuration Utility documentation for details.

Profiler Utility

Code coverage of Natural applications

In batch mode, the Profiler utility now provides options to evaluate code coverage information of Natural applications. For more information, see Code Coverage of Natural Applications in the section Natural Profiler of the Tools and Utilities documentation.

Natural Development Server

Natural Development Server is now released with the same version number as Natural for Windows.

Natural RPC (Remote Procedure Call)

Natural RPC (Remote Procedure Call) is available as a separate subcomponent of Natural. It has its own version number. This measure takes into account that Natural RPC is a cross-platform component and makes it possible to provide new Natural RPC versions independent of new Natural versions for the various platforms supported.

With Natural Version 8.4.1, an enhanced Natural RPC Version 8.4.1 is delivered. This version contains error corrections.In addition, the following new functionality is provided.

Automatic Character Conversion

webMethods EntireX Broker has a reworked mechanism for character conversion. This mechanism detects incorrect configurations such as RPC communication without configured character conversion. In these cases, the configuration defined in the EntireX Broker attribute file is not used and a warning message is written to the EntireX Broker log file. Adapt your EntireX Broker attribute file to avoid the message.

For details, see the section Broker's Mechanism for Choosing the Character Conversion Approach in Introduction to Internationalization in the webMethods EntireX documentation.

The mechanism is active if the version of the RPC server component is the following (or above):

  • EntireX RPC Server (z/OS CICS, z/OS Batch, z/OS IMS, Micro Focus, C, .NET) 9.10

  • EntireX RPC Server (Java, CICS ECI, IMS Connect, XML/SOAP, RPC-ACI, IBM MQ) 9.9

  • EntireX Adapter 9.9

  • Natural RPC Server (Natural Version 8.2.7 for Mainframes, Natural Version 8.4.1 for UNIX, Natural Version 8.4.1 for Windows)

SYSRPC Utility

New PING and SRVLIST Commands

The SYSRPC PING (pings a server) and the SYSRPC SRVLIST (lists servers) direct commands can now also be used in a Windows online or batch environment. See also Overview of SYSRPC Direct and Batch Commands.

In addition, the new List Natural RPC servers function is provided in the context menu of a node selected in the service directory tree of the SYSRPC - Remote Procedure Call window.

Natural Security

The following enhancements are provided with Natural Security Version 8.4.1:

Logon Records

The Logon Records Menu provides a new selection criterion, FUSER DBID/FNR. It allows you to list only logon records of logons to a specific FUSER system file.

Logon Error Records

The Logon/Countersign Errors Menu provides a new selection criterion, FUSER DBID/FNR. It allows you to list only records of logon errors which occurred in conjunction with logon attempts to a specific FUSER system file.

Maintenance Log Records

The Maintenance Log Records functions List Administrator Services Maintenance Logs and List Security Profile Maintenance Logs provide a new selection criterion, Modifier. It allows you to list only the modifications performed by a specific administrator.

Application Programming Interfaces

The new application programming interface NSCONE allows you to display the Natural Server view and Eclipse Navigator view options and actions allowed/disallowed for a specific library and user.

Documentation

Parameters ETPDB and ETPSIZE no longer documented

Since the Entire Transaction Propagator is no longer supported with this version of Natural, the corresponding parameters ETPDB and ETPSIZE have been removed from the documentation.

Removed Features

The features to be removed which have been announced in the Release Notes for Version 8.3 are no longer available with Version 8.4:

Entire Transaction Propagator

Entire Transaction Propagator is no longer supported with this version of Natural. As a consequence, the parameters ETPDB and ETPSIZE have been removed as well.

Natural Configuration Utility

The following parameters are deprecated. Therefore, they have been removed from the user interface of the Natural Configuration Utility. For compatibility reasons, these parameters may still be referenced as dynamic parameters when starting Natural.

Parameter Description
ACIVERS Define API Version for Use with EntireX Broker ACI
RDACTIVE Activate Remote Debugger
RDNODE Remote Debugger Node Name
RDPORT Remote Debugger Port
SPODDEBUGPORT Debugger Port for Debugging in the Context of SPoD
SYMGEN Generate Symbol Table

Notes:

  1. For the Remote Debugging parameters RDACTIVE, RDNODE and RDPORT, Export and Import is still supported. See Working with the Natural Configuration Utility in the Configuration Utility documentation.
  2. For the Single Point of Development parameter SPODDEBUGPORT, Export and Import is still supported. See Working with the Natural Configuration Utility in the Configuration Utility documentation.
  3. The parameter SYMGEN has been replaced by the parameter GPGEN with subparameter DEBUGGER.