Not supported in the COBOL2000-BC !
Only a short introduction to AID is given in this User Guide. For a detailed description of this debugger, refer to “AID” manuals [8], [20] and [21]. Knowledge of the information in the “AID” manual [8] is required here.
AID has the following features:
It makes it possible to test “symbolically”, i.e. to specify symbolic names from the compilation unit in commands rather than absolute addresses. For this purpose, the required LSD information must be generated at compile time and passed to the loaded program at a later stage (see section "Symbolic debugging with AID").
However, with respect to the program in its entirety, it is not always necessary to load this information together with the program. Instead, AID allows LSD information to be dynamically loaded for each compilation unit, provided the associated modules (with LSD information) reside in a PLAM library. In this way, more efficient use of resources is achieved:
Program memory space is saved, as LSD information has to be loaded only when it is required for debugging (memory space for a program increases by about a factor of 5 if the information is loaded at the same time as the program).
A program that runs without errors at debugging time does not have to be recompiled (without LSD information) or relinked for the production run.
When the results of a production run make a test run desirable, the necessary LSD information is available and can be used without any need for the program to be recompiled and relinked.
It provides functions permitting
program execution to be traced at symbolic level and logged (TRACE function)
program execution to be interrupted at specified points or when defined events occur, in order to initiate AID or BS2000 commands (referred to as “subcommands”)
a section or a paragraph in the PROCEDURE DIVISION to be specified after a program interrupt. Debugging is continued with the section or paragraph specified, irrespective of the coded program logic (%JUMP statement (see “AID” [8])); this is possible only if the program was compiled with PREPARE-FOR-JUMPS=YES in the AID parameter of the TEST-SUPPORT option or using COMOPT SEPARATE-TESTPOINTS=YES (see section "TEST-SUPPORT option" and section "Table of COMOPT operands" respectively)
the contents of fields to be output in a form that takes account of the data definitions of the compilation unit
the contents of fields to be changed, with AID performing the necessary moves according to the specifications of the COBOL MOVE statement.
It supports the analysis of dumps in disk files as well as the diagnosis of loaded programs.
It can be used in batch mode as well as in interactive mode. For program testing, however, interactive mode is recommended as it does not require the sequence of the commands to be defined in advance and allows this sequence to be tailored to suit the current debugging environment.