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Re: New development in .net

Ferraz — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 01:34:26 GMT

Hi Chris,

Tanks for your tips.

I will search and download the referred links.

Best regards,

Alberto Ferraz

Re: Visual COBOL 3.0 under COBOL Server 5.0?

Chris Glazier — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 17:47:56 GMT

There may be issues running Visual COBOL 3.0 linked binaries, (.EXE/.DLLs) under the COBOL Server 5.0 run-time. Starting with Visual COBOL 4.0 we changed the version of the Microsoft C run-time on which the executables are dependent. This may make it necessary to, at a minimum, relink your .obj files using the latest run-time system.

The following is from the Visual COBOL 4.0 documentation section on significant changes in behavior from earlier versions.

Executables may require relinking or recompiling

Note: Windows-only.

Version 4.0 of your product is dependent on a later version of the Microsoft C run-time system than earlier Micro Focus products. This means that COBOL executables (.exe) built with an earlier version of your product might not be compatible with version 4.0 run-time products. If the behavior of your application changes with version 4.0, we strongly recommend that you relink the main executable with version 4.0. This will ensure that the COBOL run-time system fully handles any run-time error conditions that might occur.

A new executable that is fully compatible with version 4.0 can be produced without recompiling the application, as long as the original object code is available and it is relinked with version 4.0.

To allow your executables to benefit from the product's latest programming and performance enhancements, we recommend a full recompilation of your source code.

Re: Visual COBOL 3.0 with open jdk?

Chris Glazier — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 17:40:04 GMT

The first product version to support OpenJDK is Visual COBOL V5.0 and in fact the product is now shipped with the AdoptOpenJDK's OpenJDK. Visual COBOL 3.0 does not support OpenJDK.

Here is the text from the 5.0 documentation.

Software requirements

Java 8 (64-bit) is required to run the Eclipse IDE. The minimum recommended version is AdoptOpenJDK's OpenJDK 8 (u202) with Hotspot, which the Windows product installs automatically. Java 8 (32 or 64-bit versions), and Java 11 (64-bit version only) are supported for executing JVM COBOL code and for native COBOL and Java interoperability. You can download AdoptOpenJDK's OpenJDK 8 with Hotspot from AdoptOpenJDK's Web site and unpack the archive anywhere on your machine.
Note: Eclipse does not run using Java 11.

Visual COBOL 3.0 with open jdk?

rune — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 16:59:33 GMT

I am developing in Visual COBOL 3.0 for Eclipse. I create simple Cobol programs that I compile to Java (jar-file) and use as a library in my application. I have no problem running with Oracle's JRE, but the program seem to freeze when I run it with Open JDK 8 (JRE downloaded from https://adoptopenjdk.net/).

I run my application with this command line:
java -Djava.library.path="C:\Program Files (x86)\Micro Focus\Visual COBOL\bin64" -jar <my jar>

Should I be able to run under OpenJDK? Do I need to compile the library differently?

Visual COBOL 3.0 under COBOL Server 5.0?

rune — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 16:43:37 GMT

Are there any issues with running binaries compiled in Visual Studio for Visual Cobol 3.0.* under COBOL Server 5.0.* ?

Re: Removing Carriage Return from Rich TextBox In WinForm

Alex_Castro — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 13:40:39 GMT

I will keep that in mind, thank you. But I should mention that it is sometimes difficult finding the topic of inquiry in the forum given that the subject name may be worded in a way that is different than the one that is being searched.

Re: New development in .net

Chris Glazier — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 13:06:49 GMT

I would recommend that you look at the managed code demos in the Samples Browser. Under Start Menu navigate to the Micro Focus Visual COBOL folder group and select Samples. In the browser you can use the filter to display only managed code examples. There are samples of Windows Forms, WPF and Web based GUIs as well as examples that demonstrate how embedded SQL can be used.

For gaining insight and expertise in .NET itself, which is a Microsoft technology I would recommend obtaining one of the many books on the subject or looking at the MSDN docs.

For COBOL specific information you can look at the following sources:

In the Reference section of the docs you can find the .NET COBOL Reference guide:

You can also take a look at the Intro to OO COBOL Guide here:

and the full-blown book on the subject, Developer's Guide to Modern COBOL here:

New development in .net

Ferraz — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 06:42:41 GMT

Hello,

I am starting development on .Net and would like some initial help to understand the concepts of this kind of development.

If someone cloud get me a small demo prohect with a basic menu (two or three options). One of the options being a table maintenance function (number and name).

The databse could be in MySQL or SQL. I would like some information on how to create/use this database and where it could be hosted.

Thank you in advance for your help at the beginning of a new programming phase.

Best regards,

Alberto Ferraz

Re: How to convert this C# snippet to COBOL?

Michael_Wojcik — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 22:33:49 GMT

First, a suggestion: Don't use a screenshot to quote code (or for any other purpose, when it can be avoided). Some people may not be able to see the image, and it can't be copied and edited. Just copy and paste the text; it only takes a second, and it's much more usable.

This is a tricky one, actually. The "All" method is not defined by the String class. It's a LINQ extension method, defined in System.Linq.Enumerable; and it's a generic extension method to boot, taking a delegate. So what the C# code is actually invoking is:

System.Linq.Enumerable.All<char>(TestString, char.IsDigit)

It's just that the extension method mechanism hides the details of that from you.

COBOL for .NET can do that too, but there are some details:

You need the System.Linq namespace and a reference to System.Core, which contains the Enumerable class.
You need to use the method keyword to indicate IsDigit is a delegate. (The method keyword is necessary because COBOL can invoke a method with no parameters inline; if you don't have "method" there, the compiler can't distinguish that from invoking something called IsDigit and pass the result to All.)

So, the COBOL version is:

TestString::All(method character::IsDigit)

Here's a complete example using Visual COBOL 5.0 PU1:

$set sourceformat(free)
$set ilusing"System"
$set ilusing"System.Linq"
$set ilref"System.Core"

class-id testcb.

method-id Main (args as string occurs any) static.
    perform varying arg as string through args
    if arg::All(method character::IsDigit)
        display 'String "' arg '" contains only digits'
    else
        display 'String "' arg '" contains other stuff'
    end-if
    end-perform
end method Main.

end class testcb.

Compile that with cobol testcb.cbl ilgen ; (or, I suppose, using Visual Studio), and run it as e.g. testcb foo 123 bar7.

If you're using an older version of the product that doesn't support extension methods (it'd have to be pretty old...), something like this might work instead:

if type Enumerable::All[character](arg, method character::IsDigit)

How to convert this C# snippet to COBOL?

Austin1 — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 21:37:41 GMT

In C#, if you have a string (say, TestString) and you want to test it to see if it contains only numeric digits 0-9, you can do this:

I basically just need to know how to code what's on the if statement in Visual COBOL.

Thanks

Re: Removing Carriage Return from Rich TextBox In WinForm

Austin1 — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 21:27:16 GMT

Just as a reminder ... searching the forum to see if the question has already been answered sometimes works. For example:

https://community.microfocus.com/t5/Visual-COBOL-Forum/String-handling-carriage-return-line-feed-new-line-0d0a/m-p/1735063#M7722

Re: Removing Carriage Return from Rich TextBox In WinForm

Alex_Castro — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 17:28:26 GMT

This worked, thank you!

Re: Removing Carriage Return from Rich TextBox In WinForm

Chris Glazier — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 17:19:11 GMT

The \n means newline character but if you view it in hex what it is actually embedding is a X"0A" or the LineFeed character.

Right-click on the variable while debugging and click on Hexadecimal display and you will see:

richTextBox1 = {Text = x"54657374696E67206669656C642E200A454E544552"}

You could replace all occurrences of the X"0A" by spaces with the following:

move richTextBox1::Text to mystring
inspect mystring replacing all X"0A" by " "

Removing Carriage Return from Rich TextBox In WinForm

Alex_Castro — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 16:33:13 GMT

I have a rich multi-line text box with the string “Testing field. ENTER”. If I press the enter key (carriage return) before the word “ENTER”, it adds a “/n”, which I believe stands for new line or end of line, to the text property of the rich text box which then looks like follows: "Testing Field. \nENTER."

When I move the text string from my rich text box into a string variable, it moves the “\n” which give me problems when I attempt to do data manipulation with the string variable. I cannot remove the “\n” programmatically in the code because it is invisible to the code. I can only see it when a view the text property of my rich text box during runtime.

I should also mention that after pressing the enter key before the word “ENTER”, it configures the ‘Lines’ property of the rich text box as follows:

Lines

[0] “Testing Field.”

[1] “ENTER”

I want to be able to move both lines [0] and [1] as a single string into a string variable and without the “\n”.

Re: How to retrieve a cell value from a dataset

Stan222 — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 20:11:41 GMT

Thank you Chris! I really appreciate your replies.

Re: From IBM native COBOL to Visual COBOL for Visual Studio

Stan222 — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 20:00:56 GMT

Since my last post, I created a few console applications using Visual COBOL for Visual Studio, tested out a few things, such as: include copybook from an external folder, call SOAP webservices (developed by VB.net) for simple type return values, and for dataset return values. All worked well.

Eddie Houghton in a previous reply mentioned that there will be a trial version of the Micro Focus Enterprise Developer product available soon. I wonder if there is a DATE set for the release of this trial version?

Also what type of systems are required to install this trial version Enterprise Developer product?

Here are what I think I will be interested to do:

1. Migrate a few batch COBOL programs we currently run on IBM z/OS to Visual COBOL and run them as batch in the Enterprise Developer environment.

2. We currently have two DB2 database environments. One runs on IBM z/OS, and the other runs on DB2 LUW. I would like to see if the migrated programs can access to these two DB2 database platforms.

3. These batch programs will read from input (sequential) files, and output to (sequential) files.

Should I be using Visual COBOL for Eclipse (instead of for Visual Studio) since I will be testing the batch process?

Best regards from Stan

Re: How to retrieve a cell value from a dataset

Chris Glazier — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 19:23:46 GMT

In the Reference section of the docs you can find the .NET COBOL Reference guide:

You can also take a look at the Intro to OO COBOL Guide here:

and the full-blown book on the subject, Developer's Guide to Modern COBOL here:

Re: How to retrieve a cell value from a dataset

Stan222 — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 18:47:50 GMT

Thank you again Chris.
Is there a Visual COBOL programming guide available for reference?

Re: How to retrieve a cell value from a dataset

Chris Glazier — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 18:35:40 GMT

In managed code you can use the square brackets [] or the round brackets () when using indexing on an array. The difference is that when you use square brackets the subscript is 0 based (other .NET languages) and when you use round brackets (parenthesis) the subscript is 1 based (COBOL).

This only applies to arrays though and the round brackets should really only be used when referencing COBOL data items that contain an OCCURS clause.

The example that you use here is actually a case where you are specifying an index into a number of collections. These must be accessed via square brackets. The Item parameter is a special case and can actually be left out completely and you can just specify the occurrence number within a square bracket.

set strLableName = dsItemDetails::Tables[0]::Rows[0][1] as string

* OR set strLableName = dsItemDetails::Tables[0]::Rows[0]["ITEM_DESC"] as string

Re: How to retrieve a cell value from a dataset

Stan222 — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 13:14:55 GMT

Thank you Chris!
I did not know that Visual COBOL use both curly brackets and square brackets for parameters. Now I do, and will learn when to apply which type.
Stan

Re: How to retrieve a cell value from a dataset

Chris Glazier — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 12:59:54 GMT

CStr is a VB function that converts an object to a string so you should be able to use something like the following in Visual COBOL:

set strLableName = dsItemDetails::Tables[0]::Rows[0]::Item(1) as string

* OR set strLableName = dsItemDetails::Tables[0]::Rows[0]::Item("ITEM_DESC") as string

How to retrieve a cell value from a dataset

Stan222 — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 19:19:34 GMT

I am trying to use Visual COBOL for Visual Studio to call a SOAP webservices method to return multiple attribution of an item. The webservices method takes in a string value (item number), and returns a dataset (dsItemDetails). It is a very simple dataset, only one table in the dataset, and only one row in the return table, two columns in the return row, they are (item number), and (item description).

My questions is: how can I move the item description value in the return row to a string variable (strLableName) in Visual COBOL?

I knew the webservices call worked, I checked the row count in the returned dataset - datatable. It had a value of 1.

The other problem I had was I could not get the DataSet Visualizer to work in debug. Was it suppose to work in Visual COBOL for Visual Studio? It always work when I coded in Visual Basic with my Visual Studio settings.

Below are the codes from my test program:

01 wsinquiry type WSName.RXORDWS004 value new type WSName.RXORDWS004.
01 inItemNbr pic x(11).
01 any-key pic x.
01 intRowCount pic 999.
01 dsItemDetails type System.Data.DataSet.
01 strLableName type String.

procedure division.

set inItemNbr to "00002062402"

* returns a dataset
set dsItemDetails to wsinquiry::GetNDCAttributes(inItemNbr) as type System.Data.DataSet

* check for row count in the returned dataset - datatable
set intRowCount to dsItemDetails::Tables::Count

* This is how I coded in Visual Basic to get the ITEM_DESC value to a string variable

* strLableName = CStr(dsItemDetails.Tables(0).Rows(0).Item(1))

* OR strLableName = CStr(dsItemDetails.Tables(0).Rows(0).Item("ITEM_DESC"))

* How to code in Visual COBOL to perform the same function?

display " "
goback.

end program TestWSLink.

Many thanks from Stan

Re: Need help for using extfh, Micro Focus callable file handler in C/C++

Chris Glazier — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 12:51:56 GMT

I am including here the updated example for accessing the Micro Focus file handler from a C program using the FCD3 layout. If you used the previous FCD2 header file to define the variable names to use in the structure then there are very few changes required as only one new field has been added, "version" and only a few field sizes have changed.

The only changes I made in the sample to go from using FCD2 to FCD3 are:

Change:
#include "fcd.h"
To
#include "fcd3.h"

Change:
   cobput_x2_compx(&fcd.reclen_maximum,31);          /* 31 bytes */
   cobput_x2_compx(&fcd.reclen_minimum,31);          /* 31 bytes format */
   cobput_x2_compx(&fcd.reclen_current,31);
to:
   cobput_x4_compx(&fcd.reclen_maximum,31);          /* 31 bytes */
   cobput_x4_compx(&fcd.reclen_minimum,31);          /* 31 bytes format */
   cobput_x4_compx(&fcd.reclen_current,31);

and add:

cobput_x1_compx(&fcd.version, 1);

We have sent you the same example thru the support incident that you opened for this.

Thanks.

Re: Hot to set FolderBrowserDialog RootFolder in Visual COBOL

Phil_L — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 00:43:52 GMT

I figured out the syntax for this:

set folderBrowserDialog1::RootFolder to type System.Environment+SpecialFolder::MyComputer

If I then include this line of code:

set folderBrowserDialog1::SelectedPath to myStartingFolder (a string set to a directory path)

FolderBrowserDialog takes me to that folder.

Hot to set FolderBrowserDialog RootFolder in Visual COBOL

Phil_L — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 00:22:45 GMT

I'm trying to convert this C# code to Visual COBOL:

folderBrowserDialog1.RootFolder = Environment.SpecialFolder.MyComputer

When I try to do this in Visual COBOL, the SpecialFolder enumeration is not found.

I'm using Visual COBOL verion 2.3.

Re: From IBM native COBOL to Visual COBOL for Visual Studio

Stan222 — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 18:03:45 GMT

Eddie,

Thank you very much for your information. It really help.

I am going to close this conversation now. I will continue to do more research on the Enterprise Developer, and will definitely read thru the Q&A's both in this forum (Visual COBOL) and in the Enterprise Developer forum.

I know I will be back for more questions.

Many thanks

Stan

Re: Stacksize in Native Cobol Application

Sebastian Mayer — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 17:07:16 GMT

Thank you very much it works!

Re: From IBM native COBOL to Visual COBOL for Visual Studio

Eddie_Houghton — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:57:11 GMT

Hi Stan,

Think of Enterprise Developer as a superset of Visual COBOL - it has the same functionality as Visual COBOL but also includes all of the mainframe system support to allow to develop and test IBM Mainframe applications. You will only need Enterprise Developer on your machine rather than having both Visual COBOL and Enterprise Developer. So you could run an Enterprise Developer trail after the Visual COBOL one expires.

In terms of the running the COBOL applications in the cloud but accessing DB2 Data remotely - yes you could do this using the some of IBM tooling to remotely access DB2 on the mainframe with the COBOL applications running a Micro Focus server environment. This would probably warrant a conversation though as accessing data remotely in this way would clearly have performance penalty.

Hope that helps.

Thanks

Re: Toggle between tabs in Visual Studio?

carrfamily — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:20:55 GMT

Wow! You da man, Chris! That's super!

Re: Toggle between tabs in Visual Studio?

Chris Glazier — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 15:09:04 GMT

You can toggle between two open tabs in Visual Studio using Ctrl+Tab but for doing a comparison it might be better to view both the sources side by side either horizontally or vertically. You can drag these tabs using the mouse and drop them onto the docking bar that will appear and place them wherever you wish. See image below:

Re: From IBM native COBOL to Visual COBOL for Visual Studio

Stan222 — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 14:55:45 GMT

Eddie,

Thank you very much for your reply. I really appreciate it.

Does the Enterprise Developer for Visual Studio already include Visual COBOL for Visual Studio in it? Or I need both Visual COBOL for Visual Studio and Enterprise Developer for Visual Studio install on my desktop to work?

If the answer is I need both software installed on my desktop to work, by the time I can get my hand on the trial version of the Enterprise Developer for Visual Studio, my trial period for Visual COBOL for Visual Studio will expire (or about to expire), since I had it downloaded and installed on 9/23/2019. Is there a way I can extend my trial period for Visual COBOL for Visual Studio?

You brought up a very interesting point. Let's assume that we will move some mainframe workload onto the "cloud". Would the COBOL programs developed using Visual COBOL for Visual Studio be directly executed (or ran) in the "cloud" (alternate platform) environment? Can these COBOL programs access our DB2 relational database reside on our own IBM computers at run time (not just during development or testing)?

Best Regards from Stan222

Toggle between tabs in Visual Studio?

carrfamily — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 14:38:46 GMT

I'm trying to compare two nearly-identical COBOL programs in Visual Studio. In one tab is ST-PEERJOB-TABLE.cbl, and in the other tab is MC-PEERJOB-TABLE.cbl.

To switch back and forth between the two, I have to mouse-click the tab I want, which is clumsy and time-consuming.

In Excel there are keyboard-shortcuts for toggling between two tabs: ctrl-PgUp and ctrl-PgDown

Are there any analogous keyboard-shortcuts for toggling between two tabs in Visual Studio?

Re: From IBM native COBOL to Visual COBOL for Visual Studio

Eddie_Houghton — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 09:56:14 GMT

Hello Stan,

Good to hear you are evaluating Visual COBOL. I will answer some of your questions below. You might also be interested in the Micro focus Enterprise Developer product. This is a companion product to Visual COBOL and as well as having all the features Visual COBOL offers for both Visual Studio and Eclipse it also comes with all the support to allow IBM mainframe developers to develop and test applications off the mainframe and have them behave in exactly the same way as they would if being tested on z/OS. So this includes support for COBOL, PL/I and Assembler, JES, CICS, IMS TM, IMS DB and a DB2 Emulation. We also provide a mainframe access component to allow to integrate directly with the mainframe whether it is developing on the host from a modern IDE or having access to remote data or a graphical UI for quickly transferring source and data down to the Windows environment.

We are just in the process of launching a trial version of Enterprise Developer (Eclipse or Visual Studio) which will be available in the next 2 weeks or so through the Microsoft Azure market place. This will give you access to Enterprise Developer and the free essentials web based training we provide to get you started.

To answer your specific questions

Can Visual COBOL for Visual Studio create executables that can be run on an IBM mainframe computer? And can the converted program be mixed in predefined batch schedules with other COBOL executables developed in native COBOL using IBM TSO environment. (that could happen if conversion is planned for multiple phases).

Micro Focus response : No this is not the case. Executable created under Visual COBOL or Enterprise Developer can run on all our support (Windows, Linux and UNIX) platforms – this does include LinuxOne but you cannot take a built executable under a Micro focus environment and run this back on z/OS. You can however debug and test this under the Micro Focus environment and have it behave in exactly the same way when it executes as it would do on the host but you would need to move this back to the mainframe and recompile there for pre-prod testing and deployment.

Alternatively with our Enterprise Server product we do provide a production server that allows you to move mainframe workload onto an alternative platform or the cloud. We have many customers worldwide that have done this successful alreadty

How executables 'Published' by Visual COBOL for Visual Studio handle INPUT and OUTPUT files?

Micro Focus Response : We might need a little more information here but if you are using Enterprise Developer then this provide support for the JES environment so you can execute applications using JCL and we have an emulation of a mainframe catalog

How Visual COBOL for Visual Studio reference COPYBOOKs?

Micro focus Response : This might also depend on the context but within Visual Studio for both Visual COBOL and Enterprise Developer you can specify a dependency path where the Micro Focus compiler searches for copy books referenced in the program. This could be in the project directory on a search path where you maintain a central copy of shared copybooks or with Enterprise Developer on the mainframe with an SCCM system if you have the product configured that way.

Within the editor once the copybooks have been located (part of a background parse process) then these can edited inline or as separate artefacts

Can Visual COBOL for Visual Studio access IBM DB2 relational database?

Micro focus Response : You would need the Enterprise Developer product for this. It comes with its own very compatible DB2 emulation for Windows which allows you to maintain and access DB2 data locally (unloaded from the mainframe and reloaded into the Enterprise Emulation) so you can test as developer in isolation. Alternatively you can access DB2 remotely on the mainframe from the Enterprise Developer IDE.

Can I just copy and paste an existing native COBOL program into Visual COBOL for Visual Studio and compile it, or the program has to go thru a conversion process before it can be compiled?

Micro focus Response : No conversion process would normally be required outside of the conversion to an ASCII code page when you move this from the mainframe. This would normally be handled by FTP for example if you use this to move sources to and from the mainframe. Obviously if there are copybooks you will need to have those available if you are not accessing these directly on the host. There are some exceptions – if for example you have EBCDIC literals in your code then these can cause some issues.

However with Enterprise Developer using the mainframe access components you can very easy drag and drop sources and copy books directly into the IDE from the mainframe and it will handle all the conversion process for you. You can even open the source module directly on the mainframe through the Eclipse based IDE. So you get all the benefits of modern development tools but without having to bring the source module down to the Windows platform.

Hopefully that provides you answers to your questions and would be happy to have a follow up call if you would like to find out more.

Eddie Houghton

Micro Focus Product Management

Re: Stacksize in Native Cobol Application

Gael Wilson — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 07:38:53 GMT

Hi Sebastian,

If you are using cbllink.exe directly you can use the -WL option

cbllink -WL/stack:0x200000 program

will link with the stack size set to double the default value.

If you are building from Visual Studio or Eclipse just add the -WL/stack:<value> to the Additional directives on the COBOL Link property page.

Gael

Stacksize in Native Cobol Application

Sebastian Mayer — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 07:04:42 GMT

Hello,

we have had the Problem already in NetExpress and now we changed die VisualCobol in VisualStudio. To run our native cobol program wie must link it with the /stack option. Is there any possibility to set this option for cbllink within Visualstudio?

Thanx in advance
Sebastian

From IBM native COBOL to Visual COBOL for Visual Studio

Stan222 — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 16:09:43 GMT

I am doing evaluation to see if Micro Focus Visual COBOL for Visual Studio can be used to replace the native COBOL development using IBM TSO environment within my company.

I had download a trial version of Visual COBOL for Visual Studio (2019 version), and watched the six Webinar videos on OOP in the Micro Focus resource link. I managed to use the same test data on my desktop with no issues.

I am sure the questions that I have in mind had been asked by someone else before, it will be much appreciated if someone out there can direct me to some previous Q&A links related to my questions.

Most of the COBOL programs my company use are for BATCH process: These programs are developed using IBM TSO environment, and some had been in use for decades; they are run on predefined schedules on IBM Mainframe computers; they use lots of INPUT and OUTPUT files; they access to IBM DB2 relational database for all sort of data manipulations.

My questions are:

How executables 'Published' by Visual COBOL for Visual Studio handle INPUT and OUTPUT files?

How Visual COBOL for Visual Studio reference COPYBOOKs?

Can Visual COBOL for Visual Studio access IBM DB2 relational database?

Can I just copy and paste an existing native COBOL program into Visual COBOL for Visual Studio and compile it, or the program has to go thru a conversion process before it can be compiled?

Thank you in advance for anyone who can help. This is my first post, and hope that I post it in the right place.

Best Regards from Stan222

Re: VS 2013/VC 2.2 vs. VS 2017/VC 5.0 - WinForms Control.Tag property issue

Gael Wilson — Fri, 27 Sep 2019 07:44:59 GMT

Hi Austin1,

The Tag property is defined as an object so the comparison to a string literal is not valid and the compiler error in 5.0 is correct. To do the comparison you need to change the condition to

if dateTimePicker1::Tag as string = "1"

I hope that helps,

Gael

VS 2013/VC 2.2 vs. VS 2017/VC 5.0 - WinForms Control.Tag property issue

Austin1 — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 21:37:33 GMT

A simple Visual COBOL 5.0 (VS 2017) Windows Forms program ... which has a datetimepicker control ... (which has a tag property) ... if you try to reference and test the tag value with something like this:

if dateTimePicker1::Tag = "1"
invoke type MessageBox::Show("dateTimePicker1::Tag = 1")
else
invoke type MessageBox::Show("dateTimePicker1::Tag NOT = 1")
end-if.

... you get a compilation error "COBCH0888: Illegal comparison for this type".

This compiles cleanly with Visual COBOL 2.2 (VS 2013).

Please advise.

Thanks.

Re: Error after Visual Studio Community 2019 updated to version 16.3

DK68 — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 17:40:48 GMT

Thank you Chris!

Re: Error after Visual Studio Community 2019 updated to version 16.3

Chris Glazier — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 16:00:23 GMT

This is a known problem that Visual Studio 2019 version 16.3 breaks the current Visual COBOL 5.0 product. We have created a fix for this in the Visual COBOL Patch Update 2 which will be GA in a couple days.

In the meantime I have uploaded the PU2 installer to our ftp site here:

Please download this and install it over the 5.0 GA version and it will fix the problem.

Thanks.

Error after Visual Studio Community 2019 updated to version 16.3

DK68 — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 15:44:51 GMT

Has anyone experienced this error and know how to correct the problem? It was working fine yesterday before the update occured. I uninstalled/reinstalled Visual COBOL Personal Edition to no avail.

The "MicroFocus.Cobol.BuildTasks.Cobol" task could not be loaded from the assembly C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\MSBuild\Micro Focus\Visual COBOL\v1.0\MicroFocus.COBOL.BuildTasks.dll. Method 'get_SourceFileExtension' in type 'MicroFocus.COBOL.BuildTasks.CreateCobolManifestResourceName' from assembly 'MicroFocus.COBOL.BuildTasks, Version=16.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=0412c5e0b2aaa8f0' does not have an implementation. Confirm that the <UsingTask> declaration is correct, that the assembly and all its dependencies are available, and that the task contains a public class that implements Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITask.

Need help for using extfh, Micro Focus callable file handler in C/C++

actian123 — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 15:32:45 GMT

Our application uses pure C/C++ with EXTFH Callable File Handler such as in ftp://ftp.suportesg.com/pub/download/COBOL/DEMO/EXTFHRD.C. We will work for FCD3 structure defined in fcd3.h file. It is really helpful if you have such C/C++ samples and documentations. Thanks!

Re: Excel - Adding another csv file as a new worksheet in an already open or existing workbook

BeckyG — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 18:43:20 GMT

Thank you! I got it to work!

Re: Excel - Adding another csv file as a new worksheet in an already open or existing workbook

Chris Glazier — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 14:57:04 GMT

I got this to work by opening up a second workbook and then using the Worksheet::Copy method to copy the sheet from the second workbook into the first one.

I found this documented here

$set ilusing(Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel) program-id. Program1 as "excelworksheets.Program1". data division. working-storage section. 01 ExcelObject type Application. 01 WorkBooksCollection type Workbooks. 01 Workbook type Workbook. 01 Workbook2 type Workbook. 01 Worksheet type Worksheet. 01 Worksheet2 type Worksheet. procedure division. set ExcelObject to new type Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application set ExcelObject::Visible to true set WorkBooksCollection to ExcelObject::Workbooks *> Open File set Workbook to WorkBooksCollection::Open(z"D:\tests\excelworksheets\CSVFILE1.csv", type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, 2, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, ",", type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing) set Worksheet to Workbook::Worksheets["CSVFILE1"] as type Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Worksheet *> (did all my formatting here) *> Open File for 2nd workbook set Workbook2 to WorkBooksCollection::Open(z"D:\tests\excelworksheets\CSVFILE2.csv", type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, 2, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, ",", type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing) set Worksheet2 to Workbook2::Worksheets["CSVFILE2"] as type Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Worksheet * *> (did all my formatting here) *> Copy worksheet CSVFILE2 from workbook CSVFILE2 after worksheet CSVFILE1 in workbook CSVFILE1 invoke Worksheet2::Copy(type Type::Missing, param After = Worksheet) *> Save as a new Exzcel file containing both sheets invoke WorkSheet::SaveAs("D:\tests\excelworksheets\Newfile.xls", type XlFileFormat::xlExcel7, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing) invoke Workbook2::Close invoke Workbook::Close invoke WorkBooksCollection::Close invoke ExcelObject::Quit goback. end program Program1.

Re: Triggering Keyboard Events Programmatically in WinForm

Alex_Castro — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 20:54:40 GMT

Thank you for the resources as it is much appreciated!

Re: Triggering Keyboard Events Programmatically in WinForm

Chris Glazier — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 18:46:22 GMT

I created a video awhile back which covers the basics of using the .NET Framework with Visual COBOL including how to convert a simple C# example to OO COBOL.

You can find this video here:

You mentioned that you were getting errors on the syntax that you tried.

I would like to explain why you received errors.

set self::System.Windows.Forms.SendKey("INSERT")

the predefined object SELF refers to the currently running object which in a Windows Forms application would be the instance of the current form or control itself. You can use the self:: syntax only to access the properties or the methods that actually exist within the current form or control or its parent classes.

System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys is a class which is part of the .NET Framework and its documentation can be found here. This explains that the SendKeys class contains a static method called Send that is used to simulate a keystroke.

You invoke a method in Visual COBOL using the invoke statement. If you are invoking a static method such as Send then you would need to preface the class name with the type keyword to indicate that the name is a class and not an object. In OO COBOL the double-colon operator :: is used to separate a class or object from its method and property names. in C# the period is used for this.

Invoking the Send method in the SendKeys class and passing the parameter {INSERT}

C# example
SendKeys.Send("{INSERT}");

COBOL example:

invoke type SendKeys::Send("{INSERT}")

For your second try you used:

set rchTextBox1::KeyUp to type System.Windows.Forms.SendKey("INSERT")

KeyUp is an event which can trigger an event handler method when it is fired. You cannot set an event to a value but you can fire an event using the invoke statement. You can use the set statement to set a property value in an object or class or to set another data item or object to the return value of a property or method.

There are a number of demo programs available in the Samples Browser under the category Language Reference for .NET COBOL that may help you become better acquainted with the syntax used.

Re: Triggering Keyboard Events Programmatically in WinForm

Alex_Castro — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 17:24:01 GMT

This worked, thank you!

Re: Triggering Keyboard Events Programmatically in WinForm

Chris Glazier — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 16:29:54 GMT

I believe you would have to send the INSERT key every time you enter the RichTextBox. Of course if the user manually presses Insert then it will toggle the behavior.

The following works for me for a form on which there are 2 RichTextBox controls.

method-id RichTextBox1_Enter final private. procedure division using by value sender as object e as type System.EventArgs. invoke type SendKeys::Send("{INSERT}") end method. method-id RichTextBox2_Enter final private. procedure division using by value sender as object e as type System.EventArgs. invoke type SendKeys::Send("{INSERT}") end method.

Triggering Keyboard Events Programmatically in WinForm

Alex_Castro — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 16:14:05 GMT

I currently have a rich textbox control on my Windows Form which allows the user to overwrite text when the Insert Key is pressed. Is there a way to trigger the insert key control so that the user does not have to manually hit the insert key in order to overwrite text? I looked at the following link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/winforms/how-to-simulate-mouse-and-keyboard-events-in-code

The C# code to accomplish this is :

private void Form1_DoubleClick(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

SendKeys.Send("{INSERT}");

}

In Managed COBOL I tried the following when the form loads:

set self::System.Windows.Forms.SendKey("INSERT")

I also tried the same code for the control as follows:

set rchTextBox1::KeyUp to type System.Windows.Forms.SendKey("INSERT")

Neither code compiles as they give me errors.

Excel - Adding another csv file as a new worksheet in an already open or existing workbook

BeckyG — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 14:15:02 GMT

I already found the example here on how to open a csv file into a new excel workbook. I did all the formatting I needed and now I need to add(import) another csv file into the same excel workbook, but on a different (new) sheet. I can't figure out how to do it.

Here is the code I found here for the first worksheet. It works.

set ExcelObject to new type Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application
set ExcelObject::Visible to true
set WorkBooksCollection to ExcelObject::Workbooks

*> Open File
set Workbook to WorkBooksCollection::Open(
WS-CSVFILE,
type Type::Missing,
type Type::Missing,
2,
type Type::Missing,
type Type::Missing,
type Type::Missing,
type Type::Missing,
",",
type Type::Missing,
type Type::Missing,
type Type::Missing,
type Type::Missing,
type Type::Missing,
type Type::Missing)
set Worksheets to Workbook::Worksheets
set Worksheet to Worksheets[ws-wkst-name] as type _Worksheet.

*> (did all my formatting here)

*> save
invoke WorkSheet::SaveAs(WS-XLSFILE, type XlFileFormat::xlExcel7 , type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing
type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing, type Type::Missing)

Thank You!

Re: COBOLClass sample project not working

Chris Glazier — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 12:33:01 GMT

This is just a reminder that the Visual COBOL Personal Edition product is a free product that can be used for Academic purposes only, (learning COBOL)

The PE license does not permit you to use it for actual application development for use in a production environment. For actual development you would need a fully licensed copy of Visual COBOL.

Thanks,

Re: COBOLClass sample project not working

truepete — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 18:36:18 GMT

I'm running Windows 10 Version 1903 OS build 18362.295

I was able to load the ADIS Demo and another sample with no problem.

I am not able to re-download learncobol_visualstudio.zip at this time (I've got an authorization issue and am waiting over a week for the company to respond).

In any case, the customer has decided they no longer want the development I was going to use MF Cobol for and so I no longer need to resolve this issue. Thanks for trying to help.

Re: Reporting Bugs

Chris Glazier — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 12:35:17 GMT

Visual COBOL Personal Edition users do not have access to the monthly Patch Updates. We normally refresh the VC PE product once a year when a new major release comes out. If there is a showstopper bug in the product or a security vulnerability is found then we may update the VCPE product accordingly but only customers who have valid product maintenance in effect or customers who are on the 30 day product evaluation have access to Customer Support and Product Downloads.

Re: Reporting Bugs

cobol_ahmed — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 05:05:51 GMT

I see, do I have access to these patches as a Personal Edition user?

Re: Error loading cblxecwm.exe

sebastian_braun — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 13:44:45 GMT

Thanks for your reply, but we just solved the problem. We made a *.exe out of the class which couldnt be loaded and added it to our *.gnt path.

Re: Error loading cblxecwm.exe

Chris Glazier — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 13:39:20 GMT

I searched our database of past incidents and I found only one that referenced the same error that you are receiving. The problem went away after a reboot.

Can you please try to reboot your system and see if this resolves the issue?

Thanks

Error loading cblxecwm.exe

sebastian_braun — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 10:38:26 GMT

Hi together,

we migrated our project from NetExpress to Visual Studio. While debugging our solution, we're now getting this error message:

An unhandled exception ('COBOL runtime error code: 173') occured in cblxecwm.exe [13572].

Can anyone help us, to find a solution for this problem?

Re: Setting Cursor Position in Masked Field WinForm

Alex_Castro — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 15:48:33 GMT

I think this will work, thank you!

Re: Mainframe Access

cobol_ahmed — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 14:21:24 GMT

Thanks Chris

Re: Mainframe Access

Chris Glazier — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 14:07:36 GMT

The Enterprise Developer product line, which is a superset of Visual COBOL provides the mainframe compatibility tools that you are seeking.

The product description is:
Enterprise Developer supports IBM COBOL, IBM PL/I, IBM Assembler, IBM CICS, IBM IMS, IBM JCL, IBM DB2, IBM z/OS file formats and common batch utilities, including SORT. This means that you can develop and maintain the core mainframe online and batch applications under Enterprise Developer. You can then deploy these applications back on the mainframe or migrate them onto one of the Micro Focus Linux, UNIX or Windows-based production platforms.

There is a separate Forum on this Community Site for the Enterprise products and it would be best to ask your questions there or contact your Micro Focus Account Manager to get an evaluation copy. You can also take a look at the product information on the microfocus.com web site here.

JSON support thru the JSON PARSE and JSON GENERATE statements are provided in both Visual COBOL and Enterprise Developer products V5.0.

We have made significant changes to OO COBOL when compiling for managed code, either JVM or .NET and we have simplified its usage especially when interfacing directly to the Java or .NET Frameworks.

There are a number of samples for both mainframe support (if installing ED) and OO programming included in the Samples Browser which is accessible from the Windows Start menu.

Re: Reporting Bugs

Chris Glazier — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 13:47:14 GMT

Bugs are reported to Micro Focus Customer Support by creating a Support Incident on the Supportline web site or by calling the number 800-632-6265 in the USA.

You need to have a valid maintenance agreement for your product in order to report bugs in this fashion as we will track the Bug Report and notify you when a fix is ready.

If you do not have a current maintenance contract on your product or you are using the Visual COBOL Personal Edition then you can report bugs thru this forum like you have done here and if we can reproduce the problem then we will create an internal bug report (RPI) for it.

We create a product Patch Update monthly containing bug fixes and place these on our Product Downloads website. Only those customers on maintenance have access to the Product Downloads page so if you are not currently on maintenance, or are using the VC Personal Edition then you will not have access to these fixes.

I was able to reproduce the problem that you reported in the base release of VC Eclipse 5.0 but was not able to reproduce it after installing Patch Update 1 so it appears to have been fixed in that update. If you are current on maintenance then you can download Patch Update 1 from the Product Updates site now.

Thanks

Reporting Bugs

cobol_ahmed — Sun, 08 Sep 2019 04:29:55 GMT

Where do I report bugs and such? I am using Visual COBOL for Eclipse and I think I found a bug related to files formatting when the "format on save" option is enabled. If you save and there is nothing to format, i.e. the file is conforming to the format settings then it will report a NullPointerException

Mainframe Access

cobol_ahmed — Sat, 07 Sep 2019 04:53:51 GMT

Hi,

I am trying to get back into COBOL and Mainframes -- for those who knows me, I am alive, and I am back! -- , it's been a while since I used Visual COBOL, I remember a few years back there was an Enterprise Edition/Suite that came with a lot of tools that would run CICS, connect to mainframe, a 3270 emulator, etc.

What's the lay of the land today? and has there been any significant updates to the OO side of COBOL? Does MF COBOL support the most recent updates in the COBOL compiler, and new Syntax for JSON, Message Queues etc.

Thanks

Re: Align Text in WinForm

Austin1 — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 19:25:19 GMT

If I understand your intent, this might also work:

set txt-TOTAL-BALANCE::RightToLeft to type System.Windows.Forms.RightToLeft::Yes

Re: Setting Cursor Position in Masked Field WinForm

Austin1 — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 18:57:49 GMT

Have you seen this?

https://community.microfocus.com/t5/Visual-COBOL-Knowledge-Base/How-to-force-the-cursor-to-the-first-position-in-a-MaskedTextbox/ta-p/1740321

Re: Multiple Versions of COBOL Developer on same laptop?

Chris Glazier — Thu, 05 Sep 2019 12:49:02 GMT

Although we always recommend that you recompile your source code using the latest product release which is at the same version level as the run-time system under which it is run, this is not absolutely necessary if you are running only .int code in your application.

.int code produced with the VC 2.2 product should run correctly under the COBOL Server 5.0 product as we always try to make the COBOL Server product upwardly compatible.

If you are generating .obj files and linking them to .exe/.dlls then you would need to at the very least relink the .obj files with the latest version because the version of the dependent Microsoft C++ Redistributable Run-time system has changed at VC product version 4.0.

Thanks.

Re: Side-by-side versions possible on same development and production machine?

Fano_MF — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 21:09:40 GMT

and I had a discussion after this thread, and after running some tests, we came to a conclusion it is no longer possible to install multiple versions of Visual COBOL on the same machine the same way with the older versions.

Re: Side-by-side versions possible on same development and production machine?

Austin1 — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 20:52:02 GMT

From a recent Forum entry elsewhere (see "Multiple Versions of COBOL Developer on same laptop?"), it appears that different versions of Visual COBOL can NOT be installed on the same development machine in a simultaneous side-by-side arrangement. Please confirm or not here, as I would not want someone reading this forum entry to jump to the wrong conclusion. Thanks

Re: Multiple Versions of COBOL Developer on same laptop?

ChrisM2 — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 17:15:13 GMT

Will INTs compiled using 2.2 run on COBOL Server 5.0?

Re: Multiple Versions of COBOL Developer on same laptop?

ChrisM2 — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 15:14:24 GMT

Thanks for the reply.... but it's unfortunate...

In a perfect world I would upgrade all of my clients at the same time... but that world doesn't exist. I guess I'll have to jump thru some hoops to maintain both versions.

Re: Multiple Versions of COBOL Developer on same laptop?

Chris Glazier — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 13:35:27 GMT

You cannot have two different versions of Visual COBOL coexisting on the same computer. In early product releases this was possible but it is not anymore.

If you need to still run an older VC 2.2 version simultaneously with the VC 5.0 version then you would need to install one of these on a different computer or on a VM running on the same physical computer.

You would need to speak with your Account Manager about doing this as it most likely would involve getting an additional Development license.

Multiple Versions of COBOL Developer on same laptop?

ChrisM2 — Tue, 03 Sep 2019 20:37:21 GMT

We have several clients that we support and they are all currently running COBOL Server 2.2.

One of them is upgrading their server to Windows Server 2019 and I need to upgrade them to COBOL Server 5.0.

I can't install Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2017 (5.0) on my development laptop unless I uninstall 2.2 first. BUT.... I still need to support my clients that will remain on 2.2.

We will eventually be upgrading all clients to 5.0, but I need to support both versions for the time being... how do I accomplish this?

We only run native code compiled to INTs. We do not run any managed code.

Re: COBOLClass sample project not working

Chris Glazier — Tue, 03 Sep 2019 18:25:58 GMT

What operating system are you running?

I just tested this using the same version of Visual Studio 2019 Community Edition with the Visual COBOL 5.0 PE for Visual Studio 2019 product installed and I can open up all of the projects that are part of the COBOLClass materials without a problem. I am using Windows 10 build 15063.

To see if the problem is with your Visual COBOL installation or within the learncobol_visualstudio.zip file itself can you please navigate to the Micro Focus Visual COBOL folder on your Start Menu and run Samples. This will start the Samples Browser.

Change the type to "Show native only" and select Classic in the left hand pane and then ADIS Demo from the right pane and click on the link to Open Sample in Visual Studio 2019.

Does this open successfully? Try some of the other samples and see if those work.

If the Sample projects will not load then you should try repairing Visual COBOL from Control Panel. If the samples open fine then perhaps there is an issue with the copy of the learncobol_visualstudio.zip file and you should try to download it and unzip it again.

Setting Cursor Position in Masked Field WinForm

Alex_Castro — Tue, 03 Sep 2019 15:34:45 GMT

I have a masked amount field in Windows Form as follows:

“9999999.99” (_______.__) which would look like:

1234567.89

When I launch the form, the cursor starts on the first position on the left which would be the number 1. I would like the cursor’s position to start on the first position on the right where the 9 is. It would be easier for the user to start typing from right to left as the amount field is more likely to be in 100’s position (e.g. $567.89). If the cursor’s position starts on the left, the user is forced to use the arrow key to get to the 100’s position (where the number 5 begins). I have tried the following:

set maskedTextBox1::SelectionStart to 8.

But this does not work as the “SelectionStart” keeps defaulting to 0. Manipulating the cursor position in C# is as follows:

Cursor.Position = new Point(Cursor.Position.X - 50, Cursor.Position.Y - 50);

I tried a similar command as follows:

set maskedTextBox1::Cursor to new System.Drawing.Point(50, 50).

This command however does not compile.

Re: COBOLClass sample project not working

truepete — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 01:17:13 GMT

Yes, it is the version for Visual Studio. The file is COBOLClass_Studio.pdf and the file name suffix referenced is sln which is for Visual Studio.

Thanks for trying.

Re: COBOLClass sample project not working

Michael_Wojcik — Sun, 01 Sep 2019 13:29:44 GMT

I'm afraid I don't know anything about the "COBOLClass" materials. Are you sure you downloaded a version for Visual Studio, and not one for Eclipse? (I took a quick look on the website but didn't find them.) Hopefully someone who knows something about those materials will chime in on Monday.

Re: COBOLClass sample project not working

truepete — Sat, 31 Aug 2019 15:05:05 GMT

I executed all payload.vsix files I found in the 4 directories I found using your directions. In all 4 cases, the message returned was "This extension is already installed to all applicable products." This also did not change the initial problem I reported.

As to your first post, several of the templates listed are categorized as COBOL. Just to see what happens, I created an "Empty Project (.NET Framework)". Solution Explorer in this case did not indicate either of the error messages I reported initially. I don't know what this indcates about my situation.

Re: COBOLClass sample project not working

Michael_Wojcik — Sat, 31 Aug 2019 14:28:15 GMT

Under %PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudo\Packages there should be one or more directories beginning with "MicroFocus". Inside each should be a VSIX file. Try executing each VSIX file, as an administrator.

Re: COBOLClass sample project not working

Michael_Wojcik — Sat, 31 Aug 2019 14:24:38 GMT

That does sound like an installation issue. If you open Visual Studio and try to create a new project, do you see the COBOL project templates? There should be a section of COBOL templates under the "Installed" category in the template browser. I've never used Visual Studio Community Edition, but recent posts claim that Visual COBOL PE 5.0 should work with it. (Earlier Visual COBOL PE releases apparently didn't. I'm assuming you downloaded the latest release.) If you don't see the COBOL project templates, you could try running the VSIX installer directly. I don't remember where those are installed to; I'll have to search for them and post an update.

COBOLClass sample project not working

truepete — Fri, 30 Aug 2019 20:22:39 GMT

I just installed Visual Cobol for Visual Studio Personal Edition and am using it with MS Visual Studio Community 2019 (v16.2.3). The first thing I did was download and start going through the COBOLClass_Studio.pdf from the MF website to learn how to use this version of COBOL. On page 22, it instructs me to "Open the solution 02_01_Division_Example.sln from the folder:
C:\COBOLClass\Projects\02_01_Division_Example". However, when I do this, the Solution Explorer window shows "02_01_Division_Example (incompatible)" and below that it says "The application is not installed". I'm unable to continue with the instructions in the pdf. I also tried one of the other example projects provided with the same results. Is there an installation problem? How do I resolve this?

Re: Align Text in WinForm

Chris Glazier — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 15:36:02 GMT

If you look at the MSDN docs for this here you will see that HorizontalAlignment is defined as an Enum and not a class. An enum is a value type which defines a set of constants so that you cannot instantiate it using the constructor New.

Documentation of an Enum type can be found here.

Instances of classes are created using the New operator, which allocates memory for a new instance, invokes a constructor to initialize the instance, and returns a reference to the instance.

Re: Align Text in WinForm

Alex_Castro — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 15:03:30 GMT

I originally had

set textBox1::TextAlign to NEW type System.Windows.Forms.HorizontalAlignment::Right

and I was getting an error because of the "NEW'

I took it out and set it like yours and it worked!

Thank you!

Re: Align Text in WinForm

Chris Glazier — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 14:21:04 GMT

The following works for me:

set textBox1::TextAlign to type System.Windows.Forms.HorizontalAlignment::Right

If you add the following namespace directive to the top of the program:

$set ilusing"System.Windows.Forms"

Then you can specify:

set textBox1::TextAlign to type HorizontalAlignment::Right

Align Text in WinForm

Alex_Castro — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 14:12:27 GMT

I am trying to align the text in a text box to the right. I realize I can just set the text align property to the right on the form but I want to be able to do this in my code. The C# command is

textBox1.TextAlign = HorizontalAlignment.Right;

I have tried the following:

set txt-TOTAL-BALANCE::TextAlign to new type System.Windows.Forms.HorizontalAlignment

But this does not specify left, center or right. I have also tried

set txt-TOTAL-BALANCE::TextAlign to new type System.Windows.Forms.TextBox, TextAlign(Right)

But this code is incorrect and will not compile.

Re: Formatting Numeric Data from Text Boxes WinForm

Alex_Castro — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 20:03:09 GMT

Yes, it was truncating the first two numbers. Your solution worked, thank you! The field TOTAL-BALANCE will be used for calculating other transactions so I want to make sure that even though the text box is a text string that the string that was passed to the TOTAL-BALANCE field will nevertheless be a numeric field. I will assume that that is the case since I have defined TOTAL-BALANCE as a numeric field.

Re: Formatting Numeric Data from Text Boxes WinForm

Chris Glazier — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 19:44:28 GMT

I would think that the result would actually be 3456789.00 because it is a pic 9(7) so the results would be truncated.

You could divide the result by 100?

set TOTAL-BALANCE to binary-double unsigned::Parse(txt-TOTAL-BALANCE::Text) / 100

Formatting Numeric Data from Text Boxes WinForm

Alex_Castro — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 19:54:10 GMT

I spend three days trying to solve this last week and was unsuccessful. I currently have a Windows Form text box in which the user types the numbers 123456789. I want to move that data into a numeric field with the value of: 1234567.89 where the last two numbers are to be placed to the right of the decimal point. What I have is the following:

working-storage section.

01 TOTAL-BALANCE 9(7)V99.

method-id txt-TOTAL-BALANCE_Text_Changed final private.
procedure division using by value sender as object e as type System.EventArgs.

set TOTAL-BALANCE to binary-double unsigned::Parse(txt-TOTAL-BALANCE::Text)

end method.

The above command, however, gives me a TOTAL-BALANCE with a value of 123456789.00. I have tried a couple of ways of getting the last two digits in the decimal places but I cannot seem to be successful. I was reading a similar thread located at :https://community.microfocus.com/t5/Visual-COBOL-Forum/Formatting-numeric-data-items/m-p/1731883.

I tried some of the suggestion in this thread but could not get my code to compile. What I basically want to do is to convert a string to a numeric decimal. Is there an easier way to do this?

Re: Timing Out a Windows Form in Managed COBOL

Alex_Castro — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 18:58:37 GMT

Thank you for your solution. I realize that both C# and managed COBOL use the .net framework. However, the commands are not the same and hence why I'm always asking for the managed COBOL version of the C# solutions. It is of very little use to me to see the documentation on C# if I do not know what the equivalent commands are in managed COBOL. And it is often the case that I spend hours trying to replicate a C# solution because I do not know the commands in Manged COBOL. Anyway, I solved this problem as follows:

method-id TPS0021JForm_Load final private.
procedure division using by value sender as object e as type System.EventArgs.

invoke self::Show.

set textBox1::SelectionStart to 0.
invoke textBox1::Focus.
set textBox2::SelectionStart to 0.
invoke textBox2::Focus.
invoke type System.Threading.Thread::Sleep(2000)
invoke self::Close().

end method.

The "invoke self::Show" was splashing the form but with blank text boxes (the information that I was populating my text boxes with was not being shown). I then realized that by setting the SelectionStart and the Focus properties of my text boxes , it displayed the information in my text boxes. I then used a sleep command on the form and then closed the form. So this achieves what I wanted to do as it displays the form with information I want the user to see for about 5 seconds and then closes without the user's need to intervene. I will try your suggestion on another form to see if it works better. Thanks for your help!!

Re: Timing Out a Windows Form in Managed COBOL

Chris Glazier — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 15:06:23 GMT

Just about anything you can do in C# you can also do in COBOL as they are both .NET languages that can directly use the classes of the .NET Framework.

There is a section in the documentation that shows a comparison of .NET COBOL with C# and VB.NET. Take a look here.

That being said, I can get this timed form to work by implementing a Timer in the form to be displayed. If you want the displayed form to always stay on top then set its TopMost property to True and set the TopMost property of the other form to false. This does not keep the user from interacting with the underlying form however. Implement the Timer in the second form by dragging a Timer control onto its surface and then generate the Timer_Tick event handler as shown below.

method-id Form2_Load final private. procedure division using by value sender as object e as type System.EventArgs. set timer1::Interval = 5000 invoke timer1::Start end method. method-id Timer1_Tick final private. procedure division using by value sender as object e as type System.EventArgs. invoke self::Close end method.

Re: Timing Out a Windows Form in Managed COBOL

Alex_Castro — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 14:08:14 GMT

I suppose a way around this problem is to check for inactivity or if the form is idle. The link I submitted gives an example using c#. I found another link that gives information about an Idle event handler: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.windows.forms.application.idle?view=netframework-4.8. But again, it is in C#. Can any of these events be done in managed COBOL?

Re: Lost rows with large(ish) TEXT item

allanm1 — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 08:01:13 GMT

Further to this, the problem appears to lie within ODBC. Various users around the 'net report the issue with other languages, eg Python. It occurs both with TEXT and with VARCHAR(8000), and is not restricted to cursors - I added an 'overflow' record for all text beyond 1024 so that I could use a cursor for the scan, but singleton SELECT of that overflow record also encountered the issue, when the overflow text itself exceeded 1024. You get sqlcode 100; paste that precise query into Workbench and a record is found.

My unsatisfactory workaround was to chop the overflow itself into 8 1024-byte fields, which obviously precludes the use of LIKE, INSTR etc due to possible spanning across a 1024 boundary.

Re: Timing Out a Windows Form in Managed COBOL

Alex_Castro — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 20:12:55 GMT

All I want to do is to display information for the user to see briefly and then return to the program without user intervention.

Re: Timing Out a Windows Form in Managed COBOL

Chris Glazier — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 19:48:37 GMT

What is the task that you are actually trying to accomplish? Is this a type of splash screen that you wish to display? If so then then the article here is probably more useful.

The article you pointed to actually implements a timer that checks for user inactivity. If the mouse or keyboard remains untouched for 5 seconds it will redisplay the login screen.

Is this what you are trying to do?

Timing Out a Windows Form in Managed COBOL

Alex_Castro — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 19:17:52 GMT

I posed a similar question a few months back but I did not get the responds that I was looking. Is there a way to implement a timeout feature in WinForm? What I am trying to accomplish is to display a form for about 5 seconds and then have the form close by itself without user intervention so that it may continue running the program. I read an articles at the following address: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/719cb7c9-afad-4d88-968d-2be7b4da0e39/how-to-implement-a-timeout-feature-in-windows-forms?forum=winforms

But it pertains to C#. Any ideas on how to achieve this in managed COBOL? I tried doing the following in the ‘Activate’ event of my form:

method-id TPS0021J_Activated final private.

procedure division using by value sender as object e as type System.EventArgs.

invoke type System.Threading.Thread::Sleep(3000)

invoke self::Close()

This block of code gets executed whenever the form is activated. This works if I ‘Step Into’ the program but it doesn’t work if I run it without any break points. If I can get this block of code to work when I run the program without breakpoints then it will solve my problem.

Re: Can I put a variable value in a dialogue system list box?

frand1 — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 19:49:20 GMT

Thanks. That would work.

Re: Can I put a variable value in a dialogue system list box?

Chris Glazier — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 18:53:05 GMT

I am not really sure what it is that you wish to do here.

A standard Listbox control is a display only control where you can select one or more entries with the mouse or keyboard and those entries can be returned to the program. You cannot directly enter data into a list box.

You can dynamically set the contents of a list box at run-time however by associating it with a group item in your screenset that defines an array of fields. Whatever value the associated fields in the DATA-BLOCK are set to when the screen is displayed is what will appear in the Listbox. You can change the value of the fields by having a user type a value into an entry field and then string this together with the rest of your value to create a new field value and then do a REFRESH-OBJECT on the Listbox and the new value will appear.

If you actually want the user to be able to enter a value into a selectable control you will have to use something different like an ActiveX grid control or a 3rd party control.

Can I put a variable value in a dialogue system list box?

frand1 — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 17:12:55 GMT

We are still using dialogue system screens for the most part.

I have a screen with a list of reasons users can select, but they want to be able to insert variables into some of the reasons: For example, on reason three, user would want to fill in the nnnnn to indicate the cost of painting the house. Can this be done with a list box?

------------------------------------------------------------------

The house was green

The house was red

The house was yellow and cost nnnnn to paint.

The house was white

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Lost rows with large(ish) TEXT item

Chris Glazier — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 14:05:22 GMT

The only known problems and restrictions for MySQL can be found in the docs in the section here:

Perhaps somebody else has run into something similar but I have not.

If you can come up with a reproducible test case then we would be happy to take a look into it.

Re: Lost rows with large(ish) TEXT item

allanm1 — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 13:51:38 GMT

Thanks.

The connection is ODBC.

This is one of those cases that are difficult to provide a consistent scenario for! I was hoping others might have encountered it. Although the issue is quite reproducible in the program that I originally discovered it in, I have since discovered that it only works sometimes even in the process I thought was working. The same cursor, acting on the same data, omits rows in one pass but includes them in another, when TEXT length exceeds 1024.

I have a subprocess that passes the same data 3 times, the 1st and 3rd using one cursor and the 2nd using the same definition but in a different program. When I hit a premature end of set, I have added a trap to select count(*) and max(length). When this trap is triggered, Count is always > 0, contradicting the sqlcode 100 on first fetch, and length is always > 1024. It's always the first of those 3 passes that it occurs on, for any given row set.

Re: Lost rows with large(ish) TEXT item

Chris Glazier — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 13:04:40 GMT

This seems like a very specific issue and we would probably require a test case to reproduce the problem in-house. I would suggest that you open up a new incident with Customer Support so that we may look into this.

One question though;

What SQL compiler directives are you using and what method of database connection are you using, ODBC or ADO.NET?