This question is regarding IBM Enterprise COBOL 4.2.

I have a program that requires a change and an increase to a working storage buffer. Unfortunately, this increase in buffer size has put me over the 128M max for the working storage section. My plan was to take some of the bigger `01` variables and make them `EXTERNAL`, but I am concerned that this will impact system performance.

Does anyone know if making working storage variables external will slow down system performance?

I have been told that in about a year we will be switching to COBOL 6.1, so if it is a small performance decrease, we should be able to handle it until we get 6.1 (where the working storage limits have been increased to 2G)