Q. What is Visual COBOL?

Visual COBOL is a new COBOL development environment for Visual Studio 2010. It includes rich integration with Visual Studio and a new, streamlined syntax for .NET programming in COBOL.

Q. Why have we built it?

Visual Studio 2010 is a major release for Microsoft and possibly the largest developer-focussed product launch by any vendor for many years. This Visual Studio release enables greater programmer productivity with an extensible development tools architecture, new test management, and development lifecycle support.

Micro Focus Visual COBOL exploits these improvements extending them to every COBOL programmer whether they’re enhancing and maintaining existing COBOL applications or building new code for the .NET platform or integrating COBOL with other .NET languages. It also includes a major update to the COBOL language making easier than ever to integrate COBOL with the .NET framework or create modern OO applications while maintaining support for traditional COBOL strengths.

This is also the first Visual Studio COBOL product from Micro Focus that supports the development of both managed (for multiple versions of the .NET framework) and unmanaged (“native”) code applications.

Q. Does it support IBM Mainframe style applications?

At the present time, there is no support for CICS, DB2, JCL etc. A release of Studio Enterprise Edition planned for Summer 2010 will include Visual COBOL and support for managed code CICS applications. More details will be available later.

Q. When will Visual COBOL Ship?

Visual COBOL will be formally launched April 12th alongside Visual Studio 2010. Shipments are expected to begin mid-May and will be via download only.

Q. I already have Net EXPRESS, Can I install Visual COBOL alongside an existing product?

Visual COBOL can be installed alongside existing Net Express installations to aid in the migration to Visual COBOL.

Q. Can I deploy Visual COBOL applications to my existing COBOL server?

Visual COBOL applications are built using Micro Focus COBOL 2010 technology and require the COBOL 2010 Runtime to be deployed for the application. Hence these new applications will not operate on older COBOL servers.

Q. Can I deploy applications created with Visual COBOL on non-Windows servers?

The Micro Focus COBOL 2010 Runtime is a cross-platform runtime environment but, with the release of Visual COBOL, is only currently available on Windows. Future releases of COBOL 2010 Runtime will be available on the leading UNIX & Linux platforms.

Q. Net Express has a trial version of the “Server for COBOL” for testing purposes. Does Visual COBOL have the same?

Visual COBOL includes a copy of the COBOL 2010 Runtime for testing purposes. For evaluations, this runtime is time-limited to 30 days, the same as the Visual COBOL IDE. When you purchase a full license for Visual COBOL this Runtime will have its license extended to 365 days. You can extend this on-demand for as long as the associated Visual COBOL license is under maintenance. These Runtime licenses are for testing purposes only as defined in the standard EULA.  The license is for a single server and additional test licenses can be purchased.

Q. Can I use my existing Net Express code with Visual COBOL?

The vast majority of applications will be work with Visual COBOL. Some features are not available as they are not relevant to the creation of modern applications. For example, on Windows, there is only a single runtime with no split between single-threaded or multi-threaded. Similarly there is no support for statically linking applications which is very inefficient in production environments.

A “Net Express Compatibility Option” will be available (not at Visual COBOL launch) for existing Net Express customers who move to Visual COBOL but still need access to these older tools.

Q. Can I migrate my existing Net Express projects to Visual COBOL?

Existing source code can be re-used as described above. Project settings cannot be moved from Net Express to Visual COBOL automatically.

Q. Are there any limitations compared to Net Express or Net Express with .NET?

With the initial shipments of Visual COBOL certain functionality has been deferred to a follow-up release as the focus has been on creating new .NET applications that provide user interfaces and data access via .NET frameworks such as WPF and ADO. As a result EXEC SQL and EXEC HTML along with the XML Parser are not supported. EXEC SQL and XML Parser are planned for the first update release of Visual COBOL to be released Summer 2010.

Q. How does licensing work?

Visual COBOL uses the now familiar Sentinel License Manager. Evaluation licenses are included by default and are limited to 30 days. Visual COBOL licenses are on a per-user basis as with Net Express.

Q. What are the pre-reqs?

Visual Studio 2010 - The Integrated Shell edition is the minimum and a link is provided to download it from the Microsoft download site. If you already have Shell or any Premium, Professional or Ultimate edition installed then Visual COBOL will install into that.

Q. What platforms are supported?

Standard Windows platforms as supported by Visual Studio.

Q. What is the pricing for Visual COBOL and COBOL 2010 Runtime

Please contact your Micro Focus account representative for pricing information.

Q. Are there upgrade charges to move from Net Express to Visual COBOL

Please contact your Micro Focus account representative for pricing information.

Q. I’m currently using RM/COBOL or  ACUCOBOL, is Visual COBOL for me?

For many ACUCOBOL or RM/COBOL users, Visual COBOL will be a good option especially where their applications haven’t used many of the extensions provided with those products and where they want to be able to exploit the Visual Studio IDE and integrate with .NET.

Visual COBOL includes some compatibility with ACUCOBOL extensions although this isn’t documented in the first release. This documentation and compatibility will be enhanced over the forthcoming Visual COBOL releases. Micro Focus is interested in working with ACUCOBOL customers that are interested in migrating their code. Such customers will be given information on the compatibility and they will help to ensure future compatibility support in Visual COBOL is accurate and focuses on the most important aspects.