Program organization

A Synergy program contains one or more routines. A Synergy DBL routine contains two main parts: a data division and a procedure division. The data division defines most of the data structures that will be used in the program. The procedure division contains the executable statements and defines the processing algorithms, but you can also define local stack variables there if desired. The PROC statement indicates the end of the data division and the start of the procedure division.

You can define data externally in the S/DE Repository, and reference it in your program’s data division using the .INCLUDE compiler directive. (Refer to the Repository User’s Guide for more information about Repository.)

Modularity and structured programming

Synergy DBL encourages structured, modular programming, which divides a large program into smaller subroutines, functions, classes, and methods. The main routine is the main entry point into the program. Subroutines, functions, and methods are either called from the main routine or from other subroutines, functions, and methods. An external subroutine begins with the SUBROUTINE statement, a function begins with the FUNCTION statement, and a method inside a class begins with the METHOD statement. An internal subroutine begins with a label, and its code is part of the same program as the routine that calls it.

A Synergy program may contain multiple subroutines, functions, or methods and one main routine. Each main routine, subroutine, function, and method must end with an END, ENDMAIN, ENDSUBROUTINE, ENDFUNCTION, or ENDMETHOD statement.

An explicit main routine looks like this:

main
    Data division statements (optional) 
    .
    .
    .
proc
    Procedure division statements 
    .
    .
    .
endmain

In most cases the MAIN statement is optional. (A main routine without “MAIN” is an implicit main.) However, if the first thing in the data division is a STRUCTURE declaration, or if the main routine immediately follows an IMPORT statement, the MAIN keyword is required.

A subroutine or function looks like this:

subroutine mysub or function myfunc
    Data division statements (optional) 
    .
    .
    .
proc
    Procedure division statements 
    .
    .
    .
endsubroutine or endfunction

A method looks like this:

class myclass
    method mymethod     ,void
        Data division statements (optional) 
        .
        .
        .
    proc
        Procedure division statements 
        .
        .
        .
    endmethod
endclass

Bound programs

(traditional Synergy only) Binding is a method of grouping multiple main routines into one executable program. You can combine several Synergy DBL main routines into a single, bound program that can be executed using the dbr command. Binding and bound applications have the following features:

Commons, global data sections, and classes must individually match other commons, global data sections, and classes of the same name. Only one GLOBAL COMMON and one GLOBAL DATA SECTION, INIT is allowed in a bound program.

See Binding for instructions on creating a bound program.