Enhancements of Natural Add-on Products for Special Natural Version 9.1.2 Features

This section describes changes and enhancements provided by Natural add-on products to support special features of Natural Version 9.1.2.


Natural CICS Interface

Natural CICS Interface Version 8.3.5 is available on z/OS platforms, from Natural Version 8.2.8 onwards.

If you are upgrading from Natural CICS Interface Version 8.2, it is recommended that you also read the sections related to Natural CICS Interface Version 8.3 in the release notes for previous versions of Natural for Mainframes, starting with Natural Version 8.2.6.

This section describes the new features and changes of Natural CICS Interface Version 8.3.5.

Discontinued Support for Swap Pool

Natural CICS Interface Version 8.3.5 is available on z/OS platforms, from Natural Version 8.2.8 onwards.

This section describes the changes of Natural CICS Interface Version 8.3.5.

From Natural CICS Interface Version 8.3.5 onwards, the Natural swap pool is no longer supported on z/OS when running in the CICS OTE environment (threadsafe). The roll server must be used instead. The new error message NS56 indicates the error situation (see the Messages and Codes documentation).

New Terminal Command for Calling Quasi-Reentrant Subprograms

On z/OS, the new %P=SQ terminal command can be used in a Natural CICS running in the CICS OTE environment (threadsafe) to call quasi-reentrant user programs.

For this purpose, the supplied assembler program NCILINKQ must be installed in CICS as quasi-reentrant. See the relevant installation instructions described in Installing Natural CICS Interface on z/OS in the Installation documentation.

Enhanced NTCICSP Macro Functionality

The maximum value for the tolerance value of the STORVIO parameter has been increased from 255 to 16777215. See also STORVIO in the Parameter Reference documentation for further details.

Natural Com-plete/SMARTS Interface

Natural Com-plete/SMARTS Interface 8.3.6 is available on z/OS platforms, from Natural Version 8.2.8 onwards. This section describes the changes of Natural Com-plete/SMARTS Interface Version 8.3.6.

Support of the zIIP-enabled Natural Roll Server

Natural Com-plete/SMARTS Interface Version 8.3 supports the Natural Roll Server. With Natural for zIIP under Com-plete the compression and decompression of the Natural thread is executed on a zIIP.

The use of the zIIP-enabled Natural Roll Server is controlled by the TPF parameter.

Natural Optimizer Compiler Version 8.4.1

Natural Optimizer Compiler Version 8.4.1 is available on z/OS platforms, from Natural Version 9.1.2 onwards.

Natural Optimizer Compiler Version 8.4.1 provides maintenance updates and program fixes.

This section describes the new features of Natural Optimizer Compiler Version 8.4.1.

Support for Architecture Level 12

Architecture levels are used to employ new instructions available with IBM hardware facilities in order to enhance the performance of generated code (see the related literature from IBM).

The ARCH option of Natural Optimizer Compiler Version 8.4.1 now also supports IBM Architecture Level 12 on z/OS platforms.

When using Architecture Level 12, you can generate machine instructions introduced with the Vector Packed-Decimal Facility in the z14 hardware class. This can improve the execution speed for assignments, comparisons and calculations if at least one packed operand is used.

For more information, see Architecture Level 12 in the section ARCH Option in Natural Optimizer Compiler Version 8.3/8.4 - Documentation Updates in the Natural Optimizer Compiler documentation.

Additional Updates

The optimization capabilities in NOC84 are significantly improved in comparison to former versions. This includes:

  • Support variables with starting offset > 64MB and with a field length > 16MB

  • Improved optimization for the EXAMINE, MOVE ALL, MOVE <scalar> TO <array> and RESET statements

  • Optimized numeric sign translation

  • Optimized Unicode MOVE operations

  • Improvements on the NOCSHOW command

  • Additional improvements of performance and runtime stability of the generated code.

Natural for DB2

Please refer to Overview of Natural Add-On Product Versions for the Zap solutions required for this version.

Natural SAF Security

The enhancement provided with Natural SAF Security Version 9.1.2 is described in the following section.

Please refer to Overview of Natural Add-On Product Versions for the Zap solution required for this version.

SAF Error Recording

The NSF Options of Administrator Services provide a new option SAF error recording: Logon errors caused by an invalid user ID or invalid password specification are always logged by the external security system. This new option determines whether they are also logged by Natural Security, which means that corresponding Natural Security logon error records will be written.