Rational Developer for System z
Enterprise COBOL for z/OS, Version 4.1, Programming Guide


Tuning your program

When a program is comprehensible, you can assess its performance. A program that has a tangled control flow is difficult to understand and maintain. The tangled control flow also inhibits the optimization of the code.

Therefore, before you try to improve the performance directly, you need to assess certain aspects of your program:

  1. Examine the underlying algorithms for your program. For top performance, a sound algorithm is essential. For example, a sophisticated algorithm for sorting a million items can be hundreds of thousands times faster than a simple algorithm.
  2. Look at the data structures. They should be appropriate for the algorithm. When your program frequently accesses data, reduce the number of steps needed to access the data wherever possible.
  3. After you have improved the algorithm and data structures, look at other details of the COBOL source code that affect performance.

You can write programs that result in better generated code sequences and use system services better. These areas affect program performance:

related references  
Performance-related compiler options  
Language Environment Programming Guide (Storage performance considerations)


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