  COBOL COMP and DECforms? 
 The Question is:
 
During porting of a Cobol application from a VAX 4505 to an Alpha I have
 encountered problems with record lengths between the source code and the
 DECform as indicated by the error message.
 
The fields are defined as follows:
 
Cobol Source Code
 
 01  SCREEN1-REC.
     05  S1-COB-SWITCHES     PIC X.
     05  S1-KEY1.
         10  S1-PROC-DATE    PIC 9(18) COMP.
     05  SCREEN_MESSAGE      PIC X(80).
 
 The Answer is :
 
  COBOL V2.4, V2.5, and V2.6 are no longer supported by HP Engineering.
  The OpenVMS Wizard strongly encourages you to upgrade to the current
  COBOL release and to the current ECO kit -- as of this writing, that
  combinbation would be Compaq COBOL V2.7 with COBOLAE1027ECO2.
 
  When you use DECforms with COBOL, the following are the recommended
  compilation options:
 
	$ FORMS TRANSLATE/MEMBER_ALIGNMENT/PAD_RECORDS
    	$ COBOL/ALIGNMENT=PADDING
 
  If you still need to do debugging in your application of the data
  layout and the match between DECforms and COBOL, please use:
 
    	$ COBOL/ALIGNMENT=PADDING/LIST/MAP
 
  to determine the details of how COBOL is aligning the data in your
  applications.  For details on the OpenVMS calling standard and how
  it applies to a particular call, please see the calling standard
  documentation in the documentation set and please also use the
  debugger to examine the contents of the registers and the stack.
 
 Answer written or last revised on   
