Serial Programs

In a program that has the serial attribute, system work areas are allocated statically, and the program is locked on entry and unlocked on exit.

This allows only one thread to execute the program at a given time and so eliminates any contention on system or user work areas. No other explicit application logic is required.

A program can be given the serial attribute by specifying the SERIAL Compiler directive when you compile it.

By specifying a traditional COBOL program as a serial program it can be included in a multi-threaded application without any source changes.

The disadvantages of serial programs are that: