COBOL is responsible for the efficient, reliable, secure, and unseen day-to-day operations of the world's economy.
It doesn't appear that Enterprise COBOL supports generating "empty-element tags". Is this true? By this I mean "<el1 />" vs "<el1></el1>".
Yes, it's true. You can SUPPRESS the <el1></el1> form WHEN the relevant item is SPACES, for example, but you can't elect to have the <e1/> form in that case.