All blog posts in Visual COBOL

COBOL, Containers & Cloud - Introducing Visual COBOL 4.0

Ed Airey — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 10:36:23 GMT

Micro Focus is delighted to announce Visual COBOL 4.0, the latest major release and flagship solution for COBOL application development.

Visual COBOL bridges business critical systems with the world of next generation technology including .NET, JVM, Containers and Cloud. This latest release continues our commitment to customer choice by offering COBOL deployment to Docker containers.

In addition, Visual COBOL 4.0 delivers new tools for COBOL developers and support for new platforms providing our customers the flexibility and choice to modernize business applications, infrastructure and delivery process.

Visual COBOL 4.0 Highlights:

COBOL application deployment to Docker
Enhancements for COBOL application deployment to the Java Virtual Machine
New tools for COBOL developers including the latest IDE updates for Visual Studio and Eclipse
Patented reversible debugging tools for Intel Linux platforms
Support for the latest releases of operating systems platforms
Over 100 customer requested fixes and enhancements

For further details, see the updated product pages, solution brochure and datasheet.

Take a closer look at the Visual COBOL launch webinar for a closer look at this release including two NEW demonstrations.

- The Micro Focus COBOL Team

Visual COBOL 3.0 is here!

Ed Airey — Fri, 07 Jul 2017 10:26:25 GMT

We are delighted to announce Visual COBOL 3.0, the latest major release of our modern solution for COBOL application development and deployment.

Visual COBOL is the bridge to modern software development practices and the latest delivery platforms. This release enables Net Express and Server Express customers to modernize their applications and their software development pipeline and move to the latest operating platforms.

Visual COBOL 3.0 Highlights:

New features for Agile development teams including support for continuous integration (CI) systems, a unit testing framework and 1-year subscription to Micro Focus Rhythm
Patented reversible debugging tools for Red Hat Intel platforms
Support for generating JSON data from COBOL records
Support for the latest development tools and the latest releases of operating systems platforms
Over 100 customer requested fixes and enhancements

Micro Focus is hosting a launch webinar for COBOL customers on Thursday, July 13^th. Join us to see this latest technology and learn more about these new tools for the modern COBOL developer.

The COBOL product team

Re: Micro Focus launches a new book for COBOL, .NET and Java developers

Austin1 — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 21:41:35 GMT

Is there some way for existing users who do not need a student license or a contact from Micro Focus marketing to get a copy of this new manual?

Micro Focus launches a new book for COBOL, .NET and Java developers

Ed Airey — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 09:56:35 GMT

Micro Focus is delighted to announce the availability of a new book - Visual COBOL: A Developer’s Guide to Modern COBOL. Designed for Java, .NET and COBOL developers, this new resource offers over 300 pages of technical content and code samples along with access to a free student developer license.

Start a new era of innovation, powered by modern tools that bridge COBOL systems to the world of Java and .NET.

Key features include:

A real-world example to illustrate key concepts
An explanation of .NET and Java object models for the COBOL developer
An introduction to COBOL for the Java or .NET developer
A complete reference to the new syntax for Visual COBOL
A free student development tools license integrated within Visual Studio and Eclipse.

Download your free eBook at microfocus.com. Also check out this new book on Amazon.

Micro Focus announces new developer tools for Visual Studio 2017

Ed Airey — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 16:11:07 GMT

On April 4th, Micro Focus announced its Visual COBOL solution now supports Microsoft Visual Studio 2017. For over 50 years, the enterprise has continued to rely on COBOL applications to drive competitive advantage and deliver critical business services. As the pace of business change accelerates, fueled by the digital economy, Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2017 enables IT teams to align existing COBOL systems with the future business strategy.

Micro Focus Visual COBOL enables software developers to build and modernize COBOL applications alongside Microsoft .NET languages, including C# and VB.NET, while taking advantage of Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 to connect COBOL applications to new technologies, including Windows 10, .NET and the Azure cloud. Through a seamless development experience, Visual COBOL for Visual Studio enables DevOps teams to move faster and deliver more functionality, while re-using valuable application logic and data.

Read the press release: https://www.microfocus.com/about/press-room/article/2017/micro-focus-modernizes-business-applications-with-visual-cobol-for-microsoft-visual-studio-2017-/
Learn more: http://www.microfocus.com/vs2017
Start your trial: https://www.microfocus.com/products/visual-cobol/visual-cobol-for-visual-studio/vs-trial-download/
More developer news: https://blog.microfocus.com/visual-studio-visual-cobol-2017/

Re: Give object-oriented programming a go

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Re: Give object-oriented programming a go

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New COBOL Data Modernization Tools

Ed Airey — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 21:36:27 GMT

Micro Focus is delighted to announce a NEW set of data modernization solutions for COBOL applications—Relativity and Database Connectors. These add-on solutions to the Micro Focus COBOL portfolio enable you to unlock the value of business data—without cost and risk.

Relativity delivers the benefits of relational database access to COBOL systems by making COBOL data files available to virtually any ODBC or JDBC enabled toolset, such as Microsoft Excel. For Net Express^®, Server Express™, RM/COBOL^®, and Visual COBOL^® users, Relativity enables you to take full advantage of modern analytics and reporting tools by presenting COBOL data as a relational data source—preserving the performance of COBOL data files with the added flexibility of RDBMS access—all without code or application infrastructure change.

Relativity helps analysts and developers:

Create custom user-defined reports for business and technical audiences
Analyze data using Crystal Reports, Microsoft Access. Microsoft Excel, or other ODBC- or JDBC-enabled reporting tools
Access and integrate with COBOL data using Java, C#, VB.NET, and C++ languages
Deliver secure, real-time data access and analytics for data warehousing, ETL, business intelligence, and data archival needs

For ACUCOBOL users, Micro Focus also offers a similar relational data access solution—AcuXDBC.

Database Connectors simplify the transition from traditional COBOL data files to relational database management systems. The new data modernization solution solves the complex challenge in modifying COBOL source code to utilize SQL syntax by automatically translating the existing data file syntax within COBOL source code into SQL instructions operating against a modern relational database. This approach delivers a bridge between RDBMS and COBOL removing any need for an application rewrite.

Database Connectors helps analysts and developers:

Leverage the benefits of SQL and RDBMS without significant re-engineering
Increase application reliability, availability, and scalability using modern RDBMS technology
Improve application up-time and recoverability following a system failure
Preserve traditional COBOL file-IO semantics for faster application reuse
Expand application usage while managing RDBMS infrastructure costs

For ACUCOBOL users, Micro Focus also offers a similar database connectivity solution—Acu4GL.

More information on Relativity can be found here. Additional details on Database Connectors can be found here.

Re: Micro Focus Announces COBOL Development in Visual Studio 2015

uaround — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 16:13:10 GMT

WHAT IS UAROUND?

The cry of "Support domestic producers", which was abandoned a few years ago, until today has not lost its relevance. Especially after the economy Ministry proposed to introduce a ban on conducting business correspondence through a foreign messengers. While "taboo" will apply only to officials and military personnel.

According to the Agency, the employees of these structures should be accorded only to Russia's development. The main reason for such a categorical proposal is that foreign mobile applications are vulnerable, as all information sent or received by a user, recorded and stored on the server. This means that if necessary you can listen to, raise the "archives" and to publish the whole correspondence .

In the spring of 2016, a group of young Russian designers presented a new messenger - UAround that unlike their foreign counterparts gives a 100% guarantee of confidentiality. This is possible because all conversations and correspondence users bypassing the server. It is needed only for the connection.

UAround – is a new mobile app for smartphones and tablets running on iOS and Android platforms that allows you to be connected anywhere in the world where there is Internet access. Messenger is so convenient and easy to use, what to understand it could children and older people. It can be used not only to send text messages but also share photos, make calls, create interest groups, conduct business, learn, make friends, and do all this absolutely free.

It provides all – sections "Chats", "Dating", "Who's next", by the way, this feature is kind of a know-how of Russian developers. Its advantage lies in the quick people search on the specified data. You just need to lightly shake the phone to display a list of the 50 users who are closest.

Young programmers of Russia decided not to stop there, and have already begun work on improving the app. In the nearest plans - adding video call, beautiful Emoji, internal teams for companies. They believe that foreign is not always good and our Russian product, in no way inferior to foreign analogues in quality and, most importantly, in matters of security, and in some points even exceed, that in the illustrative example proves the new messenger UAround.

UАround - this is a new app for chatting, Dating and business function calls, encryption, and "around You", which will allow you to choose a user near you.

WHY UАROUND:

• Free registration

• Free chat, which allows you to correspond with all users of the system.

• Synchronization with Your notebook.

• Discover in one click, will allow you to find new friends for communication and meetings.

• Tape with pictures and easy search user by criteria.

• The real users from all over the world.

• Upload photos to your feed, and get the attention and communicate with new people.

• The opportunity to call the user.

• Use the feature "around You" and our system will select the next user for chatting and Dating.

• Create and manage your focus group for business or entertainment.

• Get your group in the search, to attract new subscribers.

• We will help you to keep your communications secret, thanks to cryptographic functions

http://uaround.ru

Re: Micro Focus Announces COBOL Development in Visual Studio 2015

uaround — Tue, 13 Sep 2016 17:14:42 GMT

GROUPS IN UAROUND

The category of "Groups" in the UAround the mobile app for iOS\Android, gives you the ability to create and administer its thematic group. The group is made on the principle of "forum", each signed in the group user can write a comment in this group. The administrator (group owner) may at its sole discretion to delete any comment or block the user who wrote it. You can create your own group on any legal subject. Create your group, invite users, get "likes", love and acceptance. In the section "Group" has an easy search where you can find and subscribe to interesting thematic group. The first search are displayed in groups with a large member of subscribers. We made it possible to raise your group in the search for coins.

http://uaround.ru

Re: Micro Focus Announces COBOL Development in Visual Studio 2015

uaround — Tue, 13 Sep 2016 10:55:44 GMT

"WHO IS NEAR" IN UAROUND

The category of "who is near" in the mobile app UAround for iOS\Android, will help you find users UAround for chatting and Dating. Shaking your phone or tablet mobile app UAround will show you the nearest user. Users will appear to you one by one after each shaking, with indicating name, age, distance from you. The news users will be shown first. For correct work of this function on your phone or tablet, you must enable the mobile application UAround access to your location. Going to the profile of any user you can text him, send him a like and even make a call.

http://uaround.ru/

Re: Micro Focus Announces COBOL Development in Visual Studio 2015

uaround — Mon, 12 Sep 2016 08:21:39 GMT

DATING IN UAROUND

The category of "Dating" in the mobile app UAround for iOS\Android, this is the screen which is correspondence with people unfamiliar to you. In this section, there is everything to meet you. In the upper part of the screen is a "Dating Center", anyone over 50 coins can show your photo and to draw attention to themselves all app users UAround. In the category "Dating" has a search of users for chatting and meeting on certain criteria, such as gender, age, city. The search will show you users in a radius of 100 km. from city centre you specified and newly registered users will be at the top of the list, and it will be easier to find them. In search results we have made the mechanism of raising your profile.

http://uaround.ru/

What new tricks would you like to learn?

Melissa Burns — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 06:54:52 GMT

The #COBOLrocks TechCasts are here.

There's a description below of the first six topics we'll cover in the series, but then we'd like your help! Send us your ideas for new webcast topics and demos you'd like to see by commenting on this blog below. We'll let you know all the topics that make the cut - the more the better!

For now, here's some more information about the TechCast series, including the topics we've already got planned.

What is it?

A new series of six on-demand technical webcasts specifically for developers. Every 30-minute TechCast is expert-led and packed with new tips and tricks that add value to everything you do with COBOL.

Who should sign up?

COBOL developers ready to improve application development through modernization.

What are the topics?

Introducing Visual COBOL
Upgrading from Net Express to Visual COBOL for Visual Studio
Upgrading from Server Express to Visual COBOL for Eclipse
Modernizing the COBOL UI experience
From COBOL to a relational database - ISAM to RDBMS
Fundamentals of Visual COBOL & .NET

Registration now open

https://www.microfocus.com/campaigns/cobol_rocks/mgdgxvctc20566/index.aspx

Does it rock?

It sure does. Your COBOL application can do way more than it currently does. Here is where the fun begins. #cobolrocks

Re: What's Your Language?

Chuck Edgin — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 16:36:16 GMT

Great article, Rick!

What's Your Language?

RickM — Thu, 03 Dec 2015 10:09:25 GMT

Introduction

Human nature has a strange way of not letting a person recognize valuable information or ideas, even when they are right in front them. Advertisers and sales people are always trying to draw your attention away from your current interest to the ‘newest’, ‘latest’ or ‘most innovative’ bauble. You and your company have a very valuable corporate asset that’s been in place for a number of years, silently working in the background to make you and your company profitable: your COBOL based applications.

Now bear with me, I know what you’re thinking… “COBOL??? You have GOT to be kidding!”. Yes, COBOL. Whether you “speak” Java, C#, RubyOnRails or any of the other newer languages consider what it is your COBOL applications have been doing all these years, what you’re looking for in a new or replacement application (or language) and the estimated costs of replacing those COBOL applications in terms of both effort and risk. There is significant value in the applications that have been running your business.

Silent Partner

COBOL has been a silent partner in your company’s success. It has been providing information to you day in and day out for too many years to remember. Yes, it’s old but honestly… so what? It is still doing the job for which it has been designed for, to process data and provide a competitive advantage to you. Yes technology has changed and you keep hearing “COBOL can’t do that”. The truth is it probably can but more on that later. So COBOL has been processing the data it’s been receiving all these years, analyzing it, generating reports and keeping the lights on for your organization. The people who designed and maintained the application(s) may have moved on to other companies, are retired or in worst case have passed on. Yet the COBOL application they created is still doing its job and you want to replace it with ‘the shiny new bauble’. Why?

What does that bauble have that COBOL doesn’t? Is it a new user interface? Is it the ability to support web services, including JSON and REST based services? Is it the ability to process XML data or access .NET or JVM classes and extend your applications reach to these new platforms? Are you trying to get to a mobile platform? If you answered ‘yes’ to any or all of these questions then you need to take another look at COBOL. All of the technologies or techniques mentioned are supported or obtainable from your current COBOL application. The key is knowledge and being able to research the capabilities of the language, which is where IBM and Micro Focus come into the picture.

Skills Shortage

All the CxOs of your organization, and perhaps you as well, have heard is “COBOL can’t do that” or “COBOL is dead” or “no one is teaching COBOL anymore”. Some companies have had advertisements out for COBOL developers for months and haven’t had a single qualified applicant. They interpret this as validating the information they’ve been hearing all along, that COBOL is indeed a dead language. This however is far from reality.

Two of the largest COBOL vendors in the world, IBM and Micro Focus each provide a wealth of training scenarios. From basic language courses to more advanced topics in integration with the new technologies. The IBM approach is more mainframe centric and can help you get new developers up to speed and productive in a short period of time. Micro Focus can also provide training for the mainframe centric developer but it can also provide training for those developers working in a distributed environment and looking to access new technologies such as .NET or JVM frameworks. Additionally Micro Focus has created an academic alliance with secondary education facilities around the world to help those institutions teach COBOL.

Rather than trying to hire a ‘COBOL programmer’ why not look for a developer already familiar with Visual Studio or Eclipse? New developers coming out of technical school, college, or existing developers looking to make a change in their career know one or in most cases, both of these development environments. The biggest obstacle, objection, learning curve to learning COBOL has been the environment in which it was maintained in. This should no longer be an issue as both Micro Focus and IBM have adapted the Eclipse environment and Micro Focus has even extended the development experience to Visual Studio. Developers already know these IDEs, they know how to manipulate the environment and are generally already productive in it. So a significant part of the learning curve has just been eliminated. So what’s left? The language…

Parlez-vous français?

While I do not speak French I can understand the basic constructs of the language, common phrases and can decipher enough to ask for help in translating it to English, which is my primary language. I can do the same for German and Russian. In actuality, anyone of us can do the same. We learn a primary language and through necessity, want or influence learn additional languages as we grow in our lives and expand our circle of friends and co-workers. The same can be said for computer languages.

I am a COBOL developer at this point in my career. I didn’t start out that way, but I learned it. The very first language I learned was Pascal. I then went on to Visual Basic, COBOL, JCL, SQL, SAS, CICS, REXX, Windows Scripts, VB.NET and finally C#. I am more fluent in computer languages than I am in spoken languages. What is the difference in all of these languages? Syntax. As a developer I know and understand how to formulate a series of expressions into a comprehensive set of instructions that instruct the computer to perform a series of tasks to complete a unit of work. Regardless of the language, the underlying logic flow is very similar in all circumstances. HOW I choose to implement the requirements is based on the environment in which I am running in. I may be coding a series of expressions in C# in the morning and a different set of expressions in the afternoon in COBOL. The language used is determined by the environment being employed and the requirements of the request. One constant though in all of the languages noted above is Visual Studio. I use Visual Studio for all my coding.

Any developer in the workforce today knows at a minimum three programming languages. These are dependent on the environment they are working in, but at a minimum, three languages. They can switch between these languages with ease (ok, you may have to stop a second to think about the syntax) and complete tasks quickly and efficiently. Why can you not add COBOL to that mix? You already know your development environment. You already are multilingual. You can adapt to the requirements of the request. You can learn COBOL and you can become a more strategic resource to your organization while expanding your career into areas never dreamed of. COBOL truly does run the world of business and you can help integrate it with the new technologies available.

COBOL: No longer a silent partner

COBOL has come a long way with new syntax, new interfaces, new techniques that could enable your application to take a drastic step forward. Instead of trying to replace COBOL, why not work alongside it to achieve rapid, stable results for you and your company?

Micro Focus can help you learn COBOL. We offer a personal edition that be downloaded at no cost. On our Community Site (http://microfocus.community.com) there are numerous articles dealing with COBOL integration into a JVM or .NET environment. You didn’t know the languages you are working with today, you learned them through spending time and writing code. Spend some time and write some COBOL code in Visual Studio or Eclipse. You’ll see you can do it and you may even say it wasn’t that bad.

Micro Focus Visual COBOL 2.3 Now Available

Ed Airey — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 17:36:58 GMT

Micro Focus is delighted to announce general availability of Visual COBOL 2.3, on October 7, 2015.

For organizations with business applications written in COBOL, this next release delivers new capability to bridge existing COBOL systems to next generation technologies. Visual COBOL delivers a modern software development platform for COBOL developers, enables faster performance for COBOL applications and provides unique options for deploying COBOL applications across the enterprise.

Visual COBOL 2.3 delivers:

Expanded COBOL platform coverage including support for Windows 10 and SUSE 12 operating environments
Faster COBOL application performance over Net Express and Server Express platforms
New tools to help support Agile and DevOps development practice
New ways to connect COBOL applications with frontend mobile services

…and there’s much more!

Check out the ‘What’s New’ datasheet to explore all new features now available within this latest release.

And don’t forget to take a FREE product trial of Visual COBOL 2.3 and begin your new era of innovation – Today!

Micro Focus Announces COBOL Development in Visual Studio 2015

Ed Airey — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 06:04:42 GMT

Last month, Microsoft launched Windows 10 and a new version of their flagship development product, Visual Studio 2015.

To allow developers around the world the chance to examine the latest features available for COBOL development, Micro Focus is the first software vendor to offer COBOL development for Visual Studio 2015.

Introducing Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2015
As a COBOL developer, Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2015 is your opportunity to experience a new, exciting and productive environment for enterprise applications using the very latest Microsoft technology.

Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2015 delivers:

The latest innovations in software development for COBOL application developers
Unique options for combining existing COBOL business logic with modern languages such as C# and Visual Basic
Support for bridging COBOL systems to new platforms including Windows 10, .NET and the Azure Cloud

For Micro Focus customers, Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2015 delivers even more development capability allowing you to maintain and modernize existing COBOL systems alongside the very latest technologies.

Want to Learn More?

Watch this short video
Register for your FREE trial of Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2015

Thank you

The Micro Focus COBOL Team

Create a mobile application

Melissa Burns — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 07:40:11 GMT

Organizations without mobile capabilities – or a strategy to achieve them – are standing still. But with the right technology, even older COBOL applications have the potential to go mobile. COBOL has a long, rich history of innovation and is adding to it every day…

Right now, COBOL is connecting more than 500,000,000 mobile customers. So the potential is there. The challenge for the developer is in bridging the gap between the existing technology and the modern capabilities required to take COBOL companies into the future. The solution to that challenge could be easier than you think. Take your data and applications – your core business logic and competitive advantage – and create something new and exciting from it. Modern tools, such as the Visual Studio and Eclipse are the launchpad for delivering new mobile services faster and the workspace for folding modern languages such as Java, Objective C and C# into current COBOL systems.

How to create your own mobile service with our AirMiles Calculator demo

Instructions:

Download a free copy of Visual COBOL for Visual Studio or Eclipse
Download the sample code for either Visual Studio or Eclipse
Watch the 'How to' video and see how our Product Manager, Scot Nielsen, builds and deploys his own application
Follow the step-by-step guide to build and deploy your own Airport Project

For more information visit: www.microfocus.com/mobile

Don't forget to let us know how you get on, better still tweet screen captures of your successful deployments to @MicroFocus using the hashtag #COBOLrocks

Vote for Visual COBOL

Melissa Burns — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 04:50:46 GMT

Visual COBOL has been shortlisted for ‘Best Developer Tool’ in the Tech Hero Awards 2015 created by UK Technology Publication The Inquirer. The announcement comes in the same month Visual COBOL celebrates it's 5th anniversary!

Best Developer Tool

With over 100 customers currently modernizing their COBOL applications with the ‘Best Developer Tool’, we naturally think it a worthy winner. But why?

Development efficiency gains of up to 30%
Cost savings of up to 80%
Improved application performance of 75% by uniting development teams
Integration with industry leading IDEs such as Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse (and therefore contemporary business languages such as C# and Java)
Simple to use/learn ensures COBOL skills are effectively resourced now and in the future
Support for modern tech and disruptive innovations such as Cloud & Mobile
Multi-platform support
Nearly $55m investments in continued R&D

Have you met Developer Dave? He thinks Visual COBOL is the best developer tool too.

Vote for Visual COBOL!

If we’ve managed to convince you why Visual COBOL really is the best developer tool, then please take the time to vote. You’ll be entered into a prize draw to win an iPad Mini. Voting closes on 17th April and winners will be announced on 19th May. Watch this space for any winning announcements.

Try the best developer tool

Of course, if we really have convinced you that Visual COBOL is the best developer tool in town, then why not take a free trial and see for yourself?

Thanks for your support!

Give object-oriented programming a go

Melissa Burns — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 05:49:51 GMT

Object-oriented programming (OOP) represents an opportunity to leverage contemporary IT architectures such as the Java Virtual Machine or .NET. OOP is the standard for these platforms.
Existing procedural programs can work quite happily on these new platforms – but to fully harness .NET and JVM, a good grounding in OOP will make all the difference.

OOP for COBOL on demand
We recently ran a series of educational webinars on OOP for COBOL. And we’ve been inundated with requests to re-run them from clients who couldn’t make it on the day. So we’ve made the webinars, along with all the supporting materials and code samples, available for you to catch up in your own time.

Each webinar focuses on a key aspect of OOP, building up your knowledge as we wrap up each session with exercises you can try at home in preparation for the next topic in the series:

An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming
Your first COBOL Class
Data and Properties
Collection Classes
Inheritance
Accessing Procedural COBOL from Java and C#

Get started in three simple steps:

1. Watch the on demand videos
Available here: www.microfocus.com/oopwebinars

2. Download the sample code and supporting material
Available in sequence on the Visual COBOL Community forum

3. Get practising with a free trial
Download a free trial of Visual COBOL and try the exercises for yourself

Announcing Visual COBOL 2.2 Update 1

Ed Airey — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 02:16:34 GMT

Micro Focus is pleased to announce the General Availability of Visual COBOL 2.2 Update 1.

This latest release of Visual COBOL delivers even further capability for the COBOL developer - improving the COBOL development experience and enterprise deployment options for core business systems. Visual COBOL 2.2.1 continues on the theme of delivering a superior development environment for COBOL. New innovative features facilitate faster edit, compile, debug, and test functions, while also further integrating the COBOL language within the latest modern IDEs - Visual Studio and Eclipse.

Key Highlights for this release include:

New capabilities for working with Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 and Microsoft .NET 4.5
Additional packaging options for Windows applications
New platform support for Windows 8.1, Oracle Linux 6.5, Red Hat Linux 6.5 and AIX 7.1

For a full list of new features within Visual COBOL 2.2.1, please see the what's new datasheet, available here.

Interested in taking a test drive? Take a free trial of Visual COBOL 2.2.1 here.

When Applications Mean Business

Ed Airey — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 02:03:09 GMT

Changing a complex IT estate for the better can be anything but easy – but the value of those applications, and smarter ways of extracting that value, can make this a sound business bet.

For many organizations, the IT function has provided incalculable value over the years, through innovation in support of the business. The result of this tremendous effort is untold, enduring business value. One executive we know proudly boasts that his IT strategy “is the reason we are still in business today”.

However, a natural by-product of such investment is a very complex IT environment. In any organization of any size, regardless of technical strategy or bias, the IT estate is typically a wide array of disparate, heterogeneous systems, tied together by a delicate fabric of dependencies and relationships. It makes the understanding, prioritization, resourcing and change of enterprise applications extremely difficult.

“How did it get like this?” one CIO is quoted to have said to another. “It got like this one good decision at a time.” Reality in IT, more often than not, is that demand for change takes place against a backdrop of complexity, cost and very likely, confusion.

Barriers to Change

The difficulty for many organizations is that it is hard to focus, amid a landscape of changing priorities and strategic goals. For most organizations: the majority of budget is spent on “keeping the lights on” – the day-to-day running of the organization. Recent research by Vanson Bourne (2013) puts the dollar figure for resolving the backlog – or IT debt – at an average of $11M per organization, an average which has grown by nearly 30% in less than two years.

While the IT backlog is getting larger, unprecedented levels of regulatory scrutiny in many industries is producing an array of compliance measures and controls – with fixed deadlines, all adding to the IT burden. Failure to comply is not an option.

With the majority of IT focus on ‘keeping the lights on’ and adding compliance controls, this provides very little time and budget for new innovation – innovation required to remain competitive and keep one’s competitive advantage. Innovation such as mobile computing initiatives, better customer management, social media, big data and Cloud, as examples, are left untouched by these organizations focused on day-to-day operational tasks. How does that organization keep pace with this need for change and need for new technology adoption?

The Application is Key

The solution starts with a return to first principles, a return to what has worked in the past and has served that organization well to date – its applications. Sure, language choices, tooling, skills, and processes are all important, but fundamentally the APPLICATIONS you have today, and the data they connect to are the very cornerstone of business success.

If it were only that simple! As we’ve already mentioned, every day IT faces new challenges, as new business initiatives surface requiring an ever increasing level of functionality and agility. Aligning existing applications to new requirements is often anything but easy. So how can IT continue to deliver value as quickly as it needs while protecting the investment in competitive advantage that its core applications represent?

Building Bridges

What if there was a technology that could enable organizations to tackle the day-to-day challenges of IT, but also embrace the constant wave of modern technology – bridging the old with the new? After all, with the core apps written in COBOL, but the new world of IT in managed code, running on mobile devices, deployed into the cloud… where would we begin?

What if there was a way?

Enter stage left Visual COBOL. An unrivalled technology that helps IT tackle the everyday challenges of skills, resourcing, and development efficiency, while creating a bridge to mobile, cloud and new architecture innovations. Bridging the two worlds together, allowing the organization to drive more value from existing core assets and delivering a new era of innovation.

Getting Better Every Year

Micro Focus is the only vendor continually investing tens of millions of dollars each year in COBOL application development technology. The result is a consistent stream of new capabilities to help our customers innovate faster. The latest incarnation, Visual COBOL 2.2.1, is now available. For our Net Express and Server Express customers, this Visual COBOL update provides even further compatibility to accelerate their transition, and delivers new capabilities to address the IT challenges of today while embracing the innovative technologies of tomorrow. See what all the excitement is about – take the Visual COBOL Screen Test. See why people are saying Visual COBOL is the Future of COBOL. Interested in a test drive?

Download a Free Visual COBOL 2.2.1 trial today.

What’s new in Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2.2?

Paula Willis — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 15:45:28 GMT

On 15^th November 2013 Micro Focus released the 2.2 version of Visual COBOL and Enterprise Developer. We’ve added lots of great new features that we hope you’ll like. Let's take a look at just a few…

Expanded Copybook View

This much requested feature allows you to show copybooks inline in a COBOL source file in the Visual Studio editor.

Here is a COBOL source file before expanding any copybooks

Now after selecting the editor option to “Show all Copybooks”, the copybooks are shown inline…

The editor options for showing and hiding copybooks are available on the right-click context menu. (There are also keyboard shortcuts available.)

You’ll notice that the copy…replacing copybook is shown with a yellow background, which indicates that it is read-only, because it is displayed with replaced values. The others (with the white background) are read-write.

This will be familiar to you if you’re coming from Net Express.

This feature has been released as a “technical preview” in 2.2 because it is currently only supported in the editor. Debug support is currently under development and will be available in an Update.

(NB This feature is not available in VS2010.)

COBOL Smart Edit

Again, if you’re coming from Net Express, this will be familiar. The COBOL Visual Studio editor honours COBOL source formats. For example, if you type on the line after the main section in the example below, the right-hand margin text will remain untouched. Another example - if you press the <return> key when in the right-hand margin, you will be moved to column 73 of the next line.

Copybook Dependency View

In 2.2 you can see dependent copybooks in a tree view in Solution Explorer.

(NB This feature is not available in VS2010.)

Error icons in Solution Explorer

I’ve added a typo to ws.cpy in the example above… you can see that we now show an error icon on ws.cpy in Solution Explorer and this error icon has rolled up to its parent program, which makes error navigation much easier.

Error Output

Related to error icons - if you have a build error in a copybook, the parent COBOL program name will now be shown in the error window. If you double-click the error, you will be positioned at the error location in the editor, if in a copybook, it will be opened inline.

Virtual View

There are built-in filters in Solution Explorer which group files into virtual groups for COBOL Source and Copybooks. You can also add your own filters.

With filtering off, our example in Solution Explorer shows a project containing files :

With filtering on, the COBOL Source and Copybooks are grouped together:

Summary

Many more features and enhancements have been added in this new release such as improved background parse performance, Quick Browse support, Is Used By copybook support, Multi-Output Managed projects, SOA support, Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2013 tech preview, DS painter support in the Compatibility Addpack.

Please let me know if you would like any more information on any of these areas and we will happily blog on requested areas.

Product information : There are 2 Visual COBOL & Enterprise Developer products available for Visual Studio - Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2010 & Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2012; Enterprise Developer for Visual Studio 2010 & Enterprise Developer for Visual Studio 2012. There is also a technical preview product : Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2013 (it will be a full release product in a 2.2 Update).

All new features are available in all products except where we have taken advantage of new framework features that are not available in Visual Studio 2010. These features are Expanded Copybook View and Copybook Dependency View.

COBOL conundrum

helen_field — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 06:22:46 GMT

Development Managers face big challenges - namely innovating to supply customer demand, while also maintaining what already exists. By harnessing COBOL’s agility, Development Managers are able to deliver more with less, faster.

IT skills – solving the problem

helen_field — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:53:10 GMT

Skilled programmers and developers are becoming more and more important due to the increasing impact of mobile, big data, cloud and BYOD. The gap between skills will have a considerable impact on the ability of businesses to accommodate these technological demands.

Money, money, money!

helen_field — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 03:36:51 GMT

Research published by Computing shows that IT is heading towards mobile-oriented skills, with Android and iOS skills featuring highly. Results for example showed that Android, HTML5 and Java programming skills will be prevalent in the next two years for IT operatives, which is true as the industry is shifting toward mobile and apps. However, from a business point of view, mainframe and other enterprise server system skills are more important than ever.

View the blog: http://blog.microfocus.com/news/programming-%e2%80%93-show-me-the-money/1812/

What’s your #COBOLrocks story?

helen_field — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 05:17:38 GMT

As one of the most reliable programming languages, COBOL is at the heart of the world’s business applications. There is a wealth of multi-faceted stories and personal experiences that accompany the COBOL language and its developer. We captured just a few of them at our Developer Conference back in April. Watch passionate programmers reflect on their experiences with COBOL in the video:

http://blog.microfocus.com/news/what%e2%80%99s-your-cobolrocks-story/1974/

Launch Towards Innovation

helen_field — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 05:20:58 GMT

The pressure on businesses to innovate is increasing. How can re-platforming help businesses on their journey towards innovation?

The Lights Are on But No-one’s Innovating

helen_field — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 04:21:39 GMT

How can businesses cope with innovation as well as “keeping the lights on”? With the same technical resources and skills needed to undertake core system updates and new technology innovations, getting it all done on time is a major headache for the app dev team.

Read the enlightening blog: http://blog.microfocus.com/news/part-5-innovation-blog-series-development-efficiency/2179/

Is Your IT Architecture Future-proof?

helen_field — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 04:21:01 GMT

How does a business adapt its architecture in order to survive in the cut-throat world of IT? This blog explores the dilemmas faced by IT managers and how reusing what works well and replacing what doesn’t could point your business in a sunnier direction.

Here’s the blog: http://blog.microfocus.com/news/part-3-innovation-blog-series-%e2%80%93-future-proofing-your-it-architecture/2169/

Step towards Cloud Innovation

helen_field — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 09:56:52 GMT

In this rapidly changing world of IT, organizations must adapt to take advantage of the convenience Cloud computing brings. The benefits are clear: Cloud saves you money, time and expertise.

Industry analysts predict Cloud computing expenditures as a percentage of total IT budget to increase to over 35% in the coming three to five years. If businesses want greater agility and new levels of customer and community engagement, then they will need to consider Cloud adoption.

Micro Focus can help customers on their Cloud journey.

Read our blog on Cloud – part 2 from the innovation series:
http://blog.microfocus.com/part-2-innovation-blog-series-head-to-the-cloud/2149/

Act Fast with Mobile Innovation

helen_field — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 03:40:00 GMT

Mobile computing has made a loud entrance into the world of technology. Businesses have to act fast if they are to keep up with consumer demand. How can organizations deal with the technical challenges involved whilst keeping costs down and customers happy?

Micro Focus can provide a solution for organizations, through innovative technologies such as Visual COBOL.

Read our blog on mobile – from the innovation series:
http://blog.microfocus.com/innovation-blog-series-embracing-mobile-%e2%80%93-your-call/2160/

Can IT Face the Future Living with the Past?

helen_field — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 10:25:50 GMT

‘Disruptive technologies’ and ‘disruptive innovation’ are becoming important labels in today’s IT and commercial world. Organizations are struggling to keep up with the challenges brought about by the huge demand from a technically savvy breed of users.

See our blog at: http://blog.microfocus.com/can-it-face-the-future-living-with-the-past/2093/

Visual COBOL 2.1

Melissa Burns — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 06:18:51 GMT

I'm delighted to announce the immediate availability of Visual COBOL 2.1.

Visual COBOL 2.1 now supports:

Web services and J2EE integration for COBOL
Windows 8
Oracle Linux
Visual Studio 2012

For more detailed information about what's new in this latest release, please take a look at the datasheet attached to this post.

Additionally, please visit the Visual COBOL webpages where you can read about the latest support, educate yourself by watching one of our Visual COBOL webinars or try the new version for free.

www.microfocus.com/visualcobol

Visual COBOL platform support

Derek_Britton — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 04:58:51 GMT

One of the key attributes of Micro Focus' technology is the breadth of platform support for its products, enabling customers to build truly portable applications that can run anywhere.

Take a look at Scot Nielsen's recent blog on the subject and how our platform support is right up to date with Visual COBOL.

What's New in Visual COBOL 2.0?

Ed Airey — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 12:28:38 GMT

Visual COBOL 2.0 represents the latest product release, within our next generation of COBOL development and deployment tools. Visual COBOL 2.0 was made generally available to customers in early May, 2012 and it delivers further innovation and productivity driven capability for the COBOL developer.

For a complete list of new features within Visual COBOL 2.0, please see our 'What's New' documentation, found here

Re: Have you found Visual COBOL on LinkedIn yet?

Melissa Burns — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 10:32:57 GMT

Thanks to our friend Frank Borland for introducing us to this useful COBOL group as well - COBOL Professionals (a.k.a. Grace Hopper Appreciation Society)

Have you found Visual COBOL on LinkedIn yet?

Melissa Burns — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 09:27:12 GMT

Visual COBOL now has a page on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/micro-focus/visual-cobol-883496/product?trk=biz_product

For the latest Visual COBOL offers and information all you need to do is 'Follow' Micro Focus (the company) on LinkedIn. You can also connect directly with the key team, Ed, Scot and myself and we'd be happy to hear from you.

Do you use LinkedIn? What groups are you having the best conversations in?

The team here at Micro Focus regularly get involved in some of the conversations and debates to be had in the following COBOL groups on LinkedIn:

COBOL is alive
COBOL Programmers
MICROFOCUS COBOL

Any others that you tend to get involved in? Let us know in the comments section below.

You’ve built your COBOL application and now you’re ready to deploy, but what do you do next?

Melissa Burns — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 04:44:13 GMT

Find out by attending the sixth webinar in the Visual COBOL webinar series: Deployment and licensing systems

This 45 minute webinar explains and demonstrates how you deploy the Visual COBOL runtime system and the new licensing system included with Visual COBOL and will give you greater insight into:

Deployment packages
Silent installation
The licensing system and architecture

When

Thursday July 26 2012

8:00 PDT / 11:00 EDT / 16:00 BST / 17:00 CEST

Find out more and register to attend the webinar.

Catch up with webinars on demand

The webinar on Thursday is the sixth in a series of webinars that introduces the Visual COBOL product line, its capabilities and the benefits it can bring to your application development team and your business organization. But you can catch up by watching the previous webinars that have taken place:

Webinar 1 - Understanding Visual COBOL
Webinar 2 - Getting started with Visual Studio 2010
Webinar 3 - Getting started with Eclipse
Webinar 4 - A developer's perspective - Windows and .NET
Webinar 5 - A developer's perspective - Eclipse and JVM (recording coming soon!)

Got a topic that you'd like to know more about?

If you can't see it on the list, add a comment below and we'll look into adding it into the series.

Modernizing your COBOL applications with Eclipse & JVM

Melissa Burns — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 09:38:25 GMT

Do you want to reinvigorate your COBOL development environment for UNIX? How about bringing your COBOL business logic into the Java ecosystem?

The fifth webinar in the Visual COBOL webinar series is now open for registration.

Primarily intended for Net Express and Server Express COBOL users, this 45 minute webinar is the fifth in a series of eight that will introduce you to the Visual COBOL product line, its capabilities and the benefits it can bring to your application development team and your business organization.

In this webinar we will take a closer look at two major features of the Visual COBOL product line. You will see how the power of the Eclipse IDE can be used to develop your COBOL applications on remote UNIX machines.

This webinar will give you insight into:

The Eclipse IDE features for COBOL development
Support for COBOL development on UNIX platforms
How applications can be modernised with JVM

When: Thursday July 12 2012
8:00 PDT / 11:00 EDT / 16:00 BST / 17:00 CEST

Join the webinars and WIN
By attending the webinar you’ll be entered into a draw to win a $100 Amazon voucher. If you attend the whole series of eight you’ll also be in with a chance to win an Amazon Kindle Fire. (Terms and conditions apply)

Testing the Visual COBOL product

nyoung — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 17:49:03 GMT

OK, as this is my first article here, firstly let me introduce myself. I am a long standing employee of Micro Focus, and I have worked on many products in that time. These have included the Net Express line of products and in recent years the various Eclipse based offerings we have, such as Net Express / Server Express for Eclipse and Server Express Remote Development Option.

The Visual COBOL product is particularly exciting to me as it signifies a step change improvement in the depth of our COBOL offerings. Of course, as the product becomes more complex and we do more exciting things with COBOL (.NET, Azure, JVM, cross platform remote development to name but a few), our testing of the product must also become deeper and more complex. And this is where things get interesting. My first blog entry here covers the ‘core’ component – that is the compiler, the file handler and the runtime.

Testing the core product in depth is a time consuming business - there are many hundreds and thousands of routes that a piece of code can take, with many build directives and compiler options as well, so we need to be mindful of this in our testing. For this reason, we have many thousands of unit tests which we continually add to so we can be sure the core component works correctly. Each code commit to source control is accompanied by a corresponding test which exercises and verifies the code change. Stability is vital for the core component so we run these tests across several platforms on a daily basis, meaning that every day we run around 120,000 test cases against our product. There are a number of integration points between the core and the development environments which are also tested.

This isn’t the end of the story though. The tests we run on a daily basis are only run against a subset of our supported platform/chipset/bitism test matrix. When we are happy with these test results the product is submitted into our release management system for further testing and build release activities. This provides testing on a further set of platforms so we end up with a total of around 250,000 test cases. This extended build and test is generally done weekly, but sometimes more often during the release phase of a product rollout.

Of course, even this is not the end of the story – although this process ensures the stability of the 'core' components, Visual COBOL is made up of much more than that including other non ‘core’ features such as SQL, XML and the Debugger, and of course Visual Studio and Eclipse integration. I’ll cover these separately.

Visual COBOL Review

RickM — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 17:45:16 GMT

I was trying to describe Visual COBOL to someone who has limited experience in a client server development environment. This person has some mainframe (VAX) and mid-range (AS400) experience but no distributed experience. I couldn't quite get it right I guess because they said "Well in one word what would you say?". Compelling came to mind right away.

Now why 'compelling' you ask? The definition of compelling is (from Encarta):

holding attention: attracting strong interest and attention
making somebody do something: necessitating action of belief

I explained VCR3 will not only grab your attention, it will hold it for a long time and enable you to imagine using your code for things that it was never, ever designed or intended for! It will make you realize some of the things you thought about doing but felt were too difficult now become rather simple, straightforward tasks to be accomplished in a new environment.

What was my first impression of VisualCOBOL R3? WOW! I liked the Visual Studio 2010 interface and environment. For some reason this version just seems to shine and really makes someone want to create new applications and see what they can do. The concern was how the COBOL environment would tie-in. Well it tied in very nicely Thank you and makes coding very easy and refreshing. This may not be true but to me it sure seems like the intellisense is much faster than in previous versions (which is nice for those like me who are more advanced in age). Also the web service creation looks like it has come a bit further along and makes creating web services so simple it should really extend COBOL a long way.

Not really sure what else can be done to make it better in the future though. Faster? Easier to use? Same capabilities as native Microsoft langauges? Can't do any of that because it's all in there already. Give it a try, kick the tires... you'll be purchasing a new ride, no doubt at all!

Happy Birthday!

Mark_Warren — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 14:44:11 GMT

In all the excitement, I almost missed the anniversary of the launch of Visual COBOL 1 year ago yesterday.

Soma sums up all the changes in Visual Studio in his great blog post. Visual COBOL has had an amazing year as well - more releases in a year that Micro Focus had ever made before. A few quick highlights:

12 Apr 2010: Product available on launch day, Micro Focus were the only language vendor to participate in both main launch events in Bangalore and Las Vegas. Although the event was memorable in itself, sadly the Icelandic ash cloud and delayed returns from the events took the edge off the celebrations.

31 Jul 2010: Visual COBOL R2 launched. Building on the "Deliver early, deliver often" approach this was a relatively small update but included important new functionality including the start of XML support and, most importantly, inclusion of the OpenESQL relational database tools. It also became the base for the ground-breaking "CICS for .NET" support in Studio Enterprise Edition v6.0 SP1.

20 Jan 2011: Although the release was completed before the holiday break, January saw the official launch of Visual COBOL R3 - by far the biggest update since the initial launch. This release introduced support for the Eclipse IDE, UNIX & Linux platforms, Azure deployments, SQL Server stored procedures, compatibility with ACUCOBOL extend and, most importantly, the first COBOL that compiles existing code directly to Java style .class files. Worldwide launch events saw hundreds of customers visiting Micro Focus offices to get their hands on the product and meet its developers. Industry analyst and press reception was overwhelming positive as has been the reaction from its users.

What's next? 2011 is going to be another big year for Visual COBOL. May will see the next update with further language innovation, support for RM COBOL applications, further ACUCOBOL support and much more. Further releases for later in the year and into 2012 are being planned.

If you haven't tried Visual COBOL yet, now's the time to get going and we look forward to celebrating the second birthday and I'm sure there's going to be plenty to talk about at the party!

Visual COBOL webinar series

Melissa Burns — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 14:43:48 GMT

*This blog has been updated with revised dates for future webinars*

We’re launching a webinar series to introduce the Visual COBOL product line, its capabilities and the benefits it can bring to your application development team and your business organization.

Webinar #1: Understanding the basics

We’re kicking off the webinar series with ‘Visual COBOL – Understanding the basics’ on Thursday 26^th January 2012.

Our Visual COBOL product team (Product Manager, Scot Nielsen and Product Marketing Director, Ed Airey) will introduce the Visual COBOL product line, give a brief demonstration of the product in action and will answer any questions.

Primarily intended for Net Express and Server Express COBOL users, this 45 minute webinar will highlight the benefits of upgrading to Visual COBOL, its unique capabilities, and will discuss and demonstrate various topics related to the upgrade path.

Highlights:

Understand more about Visual COBOL
Discover the benefits for your development activities
Engage with the product team
Be in with a chance to win Amazon prizes

When: Thursday 26 January 2012 - 8:00 PST/11:00 EST/16:00 BST/17:00 CET

Visual COBOL Webinar Series

The complete webinar series will guide you from an introduction to the Visual COBOL product line to a more in depth look at some of the key features and benefits the product can bring to your organization.

Webinar Title	Webinar Date
Understanding Visual COBOL	View the recording
Getting started with Visual Studio 2010	View the recording
Getting started with Eclipse	Thursday, May 24 2012
Visual COBOL: A developer's perspective - Windows & .Net	Thursday, June 28 2012
Visual COBOL: A developer's perspective - Eclipse & JVM	Thursday, July 12 2012
Visual COBOL Deployment and licensing systems	Thursday, July 26 2012
Re-using COBOL business logic with .Net	Thursday, September 13 2012
Re-using COBOL business logic with Java	Thursday, October 18 2012
Best Practices for Native & Managed Code Development	Thursday, November 22 2012
UI Modernization for Net Express & Server Express	TBC

Save for the dates for now, but look out for the invitation emails that we’ll send nearer the dates with more information and registration details.

Join the webinars and WIN.

When you attend a webinar you’ll be entered into a draw to win a $100 Amazon voucher. If you attend the whole series of seven you’ll also be in with a chance to win an Amazon Kindle Fire.

Visual COBOL Launch Day

Mark_Warren — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 14:43:08 GMT

It’s been just over a week now since the launch of Visual COBOL R3. The weeks leading up the launch were pretty much a blur and this week has been following up on the launch feedback, additional press and analyst interviews and starting to work through the backlog that’s been building up for everything outside the launch.

The day itself was an amazing experience and well worth all the effort. Micro Focus have never tried anything as big in the past and we can’t say everything went absolutely to plan but it was a great success. Coverage and feedback from attendees has been extremely positive. Here is just a small sample of the launch coverage.

“COBOL's not dead. Make it play nice with the modern enterprise” – Wall Street Journal All Things Digital

“Rallying the COBOL Community” – IT Business Edge

“Micro Focus extends Cobol to Java and the cloud” – Infoworld

“COBOL drinks from cloudy fountain of youth” – The Register (UK), with a lively debate in the comments!

“Micro Focus aims to simplify COBOL” – Dr. Dobbs

“Programming language that was created in 1959 can now run on Microsoft Azure cloud” – IT Computerworld Israel

The day itself was a long one but a lot of fun. Here’s how I remember it:

06:00 Arrived at the Newbury HQ and the video crew are already in place making sure everything was ready

07:00 First launch event goes live for Asia and Australia. It’s the first time the entire session has been run from start to finish and the adrenaline is pumping so we finish a little early but had good questions being fed through via the streaming web site.

09:00 And that's a wrap! The first session has been completed with no stumbles and all the demos work fine. Deep sighs of relief all around!

10:30 The Bacon Butties finally arrive!

11:00 The first customers and partners arrive in the Newbury office for the live event. Similar events are being held in many other Micro Focus offices. Developers from the Visual COBOL team have travelled out to most of them to help with demos and talk to customers.

13:00 The second event gets started. This was always going to be the most challenging with a live audience and complex audio conference set up to allow remote offices to join in and ask questions. Shortly after the start we started hearing about problems with the video streaming site. It appears that although the video was getting through fine, attendees were having trouble getting through the registration process – it turns out demand had been much higher than expected and the servers were struggling. The audio bridge works fine and gives us a chance to hear from remote sites.

15:00 The European event is a wrap. We had questions from the remote offices and still managed to get some via the web even with the server problems. The attendees in Newbury and the other offices had a chance to discuss the new products with the developers and some even brought their own code to try out. A second video crew was in Newbury to collect impressions of the product and event from attendees and staff. Hopefully that video will be publically available soon.

16:00 The video crew were feverishly trying to edit and publish the event recordings online for those people that had trouble getting onto the live event. They achieve miracles and the video goes live.

17:00 The final event gets started for the North and South American region. By this time we’re pretty confident in the presentations and videos but we still had problems with the event registration servers. The video crew hastily make a backup stream available which works perfectly but means the online question submissions service is unavailable. We fall back to using Twitter and email which works extremely well and those questions we didn’t get to were posted to the new Micro Focus Developer Community which also went live on the day.

19:00 And that’s a wrap! The final session has been completed. Deep sighs of relief are repeated.

20:30 Finally time to celebrate with a couple of pints at a local hostelry and start thinking about the next launch …

You can see the videos on the Visual COBOL website and view personalized videos describing your potential routes to Visual COBOL at http://visualcobol.microfocus.com.

It was a great day and the culmination of nearly two years’ effort that involved contributions from right across the company and Micro Focus teams from across the globe. I’d really like to thank everyone that was involved – we’ve built a great family of products and it was the biggest launch we’ve ever attempted. Now, for the next one … 🙂

If you attended any of the sessions either online or in person, please leave a comment to let us know what you thought of the events and what we could have done better. If you check out the posts in the Library area, you can even win some very cool prizes for joing the conversation.

Visual COBOL - Visualized!

Derek_Britton — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 04:29:04 GMT

See and hear for yourself how Visual COBOL improves collaboration, time to market, enterprise software development practices, and IT skills.

Watch the video here.

Visual COBOL - The Future of COBOL.

Visual COBOL or Java? shouldn't that be Visual COBOL AND Java...

Derek_Britton — Thu, 31 May 2012 10:16:18 GMT

Nothing quite beats a bit of computer language bias to get a good debate going. Nothing raises the shackles quite like a good argument about what's better than what.

Recent posts in dzone on the value of (Visual) COBOL met with derision and support in equal measure, while the COBOL v Java debate flared up on the register earlier this year#

More recently, we heard a variety of speakers at the Micro Focus developers' conference in April talk about the enduring value of COBOL, and how smart IT leaders are finding ways to exploit COBOL value in more and more innovative and business-aligned ways# So the brave new world of mobile, web and the march towards consumerization is all being embraced by - first - reusing what is there already

What this means for Visual COBOL is the continued co-existence in a heterogeneous IT world, working alongside Java, C# and all manner of emerging technologies

See our latest post which summarizes our view - http://blog.microfocus.com/cobol-still-standing-the-test-of-time/1540/

[this entry is also posted on the COBOL blog]

Software That Works

Mark_Warren — Mon, 28 May 2012 09:13:15 GMT

I think Adrian Bridgwater (@ABridgwater) makes an important point that Legacy isn't necessarily a bad word. However, I would take a little issue with his comment:

this is quite simply SOFTWARE THAT STILL WORKS."

The "still" isn't quite right, it's slightly perjorative and almost makes it sound like a surprise that existing applications continue to deliver value.

His point about last week's spreadsheet being legacy is absolutely right and puts it into context.

My version (which of course is far less concise or easy to read) might be:

"... it's software that continues to work and will do so into the future even if it delivers the service in new ways, on new platforms, with new UIs."

Full fat or skinny IDE?

Mark_Warren — Mon, 28 May 2012 09:02:57 GMT

One of the great benefits (at least to my mind) of Visual COBOL is that you can choose the IDE you prefer - Visual Studio or Eclipse - and, especially if you've used the IDE before with other languages, then the time to become productive can be extremely short. It also means that COBOL developers get access to many great tools "for free".

However, some people have said these IDEs can be overwhelming if you're new to them. This isn't just a COBOL problem, it affects every language. Mike Fourie idenfies many of the potential weaknesses in Visual Studio in his post, but perhaps this picture sums up the potential problem better than the words!

Clearly this is an extreme example!

Scott Hanselman (who is always worth reading), proposed an equally extreme solution to "Simplify your Visual Studio 2010 Toolbar and Free Your Mind" but perhaps that's going a little too far.

Microsoft spend a lot of time and resources on programmer productivity and every release sees changes in this area, I'm sure there'll be many improvements in the next release. However I'd say Visual Studio remains the most productive development environment for Windows available today and Eclipse isn't far behind for cross-platform or mixed COBOL/Java development. Ultimately, the strength of them both is that they are consistent with other languages and can be easily customized and extended to the way you want to work which isn't something that can be said of the previous generations of COBOL development tools.

Java - The Three-Legged Stool

Mark_Warren — Mon, 28 May 2012 08:47:35 GMT

One of the biggest news items with the Visual COBOL R3 release was the unique support it offers to be able to take a single piece of COBOL source code and compile to INT code, native code, .NET or, for the first time, directly to JVM bytecode.

I frequently hear of IT organizations and ISVs saying "we have to rewrite in Java" (sometimes they say "we have to rewrite in .NET" - and this has almost all the same issues but even worse in that there isn't, strictly speaking, a ".NET language").

What they usually really mean is that they need to be able to easily deploy and administer their application using well known Java Application Servers such as WebSphere, JBoss or GlassFish and so they think they have to rewrite their code in the Java language to make use of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and supporting libraries.

With Visual COBOL we're breaking down that assumption - for many applications there is a better language than Java. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things that Java is better suited for - I wouldn't recommend writing DVD control code or coffee machine firmware in COBOL (although no doubt it's possible!) However if you're talking about enterprise business applications, especially where there's already a full-functional and proven COBOL application, then it really doesn't make sense to rewrite.

With all that in mind, I was very happy to come across this blog post Sun alumni Tom Bray written in 2004. It was really a discussion about dynamic languages and Java, but includes this great comment (my highlights):

Java has a PR problem; while Microsoft marketed the .NET stuff as multi-language from day one, the fact that Java is a three-legged stool (language, JVM, libraries) kind of gets lost under the enveloping carpet of the one-word name “Java”.

So Java has never really just been about the language. It's vital that the JVM and the supporting libraries are part of the stack.

He goes on to say:

And I confidently predict that as time goes by, more and more of the code written in the Java ecosystem won’t be in Java. This is a good thing.

And I think Visual COBOL is delivering on that prediction.

As Mark Driver of Garner said at the time of the Visual COBOL R3 launch:

Taking COBOL to new platforms like .NET, JVM or the cloud supports a growing trend toward developers choosing the best language for the job, independent of the choice of best deployment platform.

And Gary Flood said in Computer Business Review:

Is there a place for COBOL in the cloud? Sure. Will this release sway anyone to dump Java to write same? Very much an open question

P.S. What's really sad about the post is that it identifies a lot of the problems with Java, such as Closures, which are still not solved and still cause constant debate 7 years on Thankfully modern COBOL solves most of them already.

Visual COBOL webinar #2: Getting Started with Visual Studio 2010

Melissa Burns — Mon, 28 May 2012 08:34:30 GMT

*This blog has been updated with revised dates for future webinars*

We recently launched a webinar series to introduce the Visual COBOL product line, its capabilities and the benefits it can bring to your application development team and your business organization.

The first webinar in the series, Visual COBOL – understanding the basics, was well attended and received great feedback. You can take a look at the Q&A session transcript from the webinar on our forum.

Webinar #2: Getting Started with Visual Studio 2010

During the second webinar in the Visual COBOL webinar series, we’ll take you through the fundamentals of what’s involved in getting your existing COBOL source code compiled and debugged inside the Visual Studio IDE.

In this 45 minute webinar, the Visual COBOL product team (Product Manager, Scot Nielsen and Product Marketing Director, Ed Airey)will introduce you to the Visual Studio 2010 IDE as well as give you a brief demonstration of the steps needed to get set up and running with Visual COBOL for Visual Studio.

Highlights:

Introduction to Visual Studio 2010
Walk through steps needed to get set up
Engage with the product team
Be in with a chance to win Amazon prizes

When: Thursday March 22 2012

(The live webinar has already taken place but you can still download and watch the recording)

Download the recording

Visual COBOL Webinar Series

Webinar Title	Webinar Date
Understanding Visual COBOL	View the recording
Getting started with Visual Studio 2010	View the recording
Getting started with Eclipse	Thursday, May 24 2012
Visual COBOL: A developer's perspective - Windows & .Net	Thursday, June 21 2012
Visual COBOL: A developer's perspective - Eclipse & JVM	Thursday, July 12 2012
Visual COBOL Deployment and licensing systems	Thursday, July 26 2012
Re-using COBOL business logic with .Net	Thursday, September 20 2012
Re-using COBOL business logic with Java	Thursday, October 25 2012
Best Practices for Native & Managed Code Development	Thursday, November 29 2012

Save for the dates for now, but look out for the invitation emails that we’ll send nearer the dates with more information and registration details (dates may be subject to change).

Join the webinars and WIN.

When you attend a webinar you’ll be entered into a draw to win a $100 Amazon voucher. If you attend the whole series of eight you’ll also be in with a chance to win an Amazon Kindle Fire. (Terms and conditions apply)

Still Standing the Test of Time - Relevance and Robustness

Derek_Britton — Mon, 28 May 2012 08:04:12 GMT

The debate over COBOL’s continued relevance and indeed its future continues to persist in the developer community and IT world in general. But while every business has its language preferences, there is no denying that COBOL continues to play a vital role for enterprise business applications. COBOL still runs over 70% of the world’s business and more transactions are still processed daily by COBOL than there are Google searches made.

While many also debate the status of Java in relation to COBOL for business applications, COBOL remains the preferred choice for systems where application quality and operating cost remain important considerations, so often the case when addressing the ever-present issue of IT debt. When many businesses are facing mounting IT debt, the average cost per line of code for COBOL was projected to be £0.80 whereas the cost to address Java quality issues per line of code was £3.47, according to a recent IT study.

The benefits of COBOL, however, are not found in its exclusivity, but also in its ability to comfortably co-exist with other programming languages- such as Java – that are typically used to build new front-ends for new platforms and devices.

COBOL can function efficiently for vital business applications as a reliable language while also liaising with languages such as Java and C#, typically used in the construction of new interfaces; these languages combine forces in helping businesses deliver the services to support new requirements such as BYOD and other mobile initiatives through renewed, composite enterprise applications. While some in the industry may doubt COBOL’s relevance for today’s business applications – mainly due to its considerable age as a programming language – the fact that it has been vetted and proven over several decades actually stands in its favor: much of the required “new” functionality already exists, written in COBOL. It is merely a question of how it is made available to the user.

Add to this the flexibility of the language to be adapted for future needs, and its ability to liaise with other front-end technologies, and COBOL remains a lower-risk option for businesses because of its prevalence over the past half a century, and not in spite of it. It is a myth that IT organizations must choose between one language and another – they can in fact work with whichever language(s) make most sense according to their business requirements. And ageless COBOL continues to meet those needs.

This blog first appeared in April 2012 on blog.microfocus.com but is republished in support of this new community site.

Re: Happy Birthday!

Michael Burgun — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 04:33:38 GMT

Happy birthday and well done for all the good work!