Upgrading Your COBOL Application

Prerequisites

In most situations when you are upgrading to Enterprise Developer, you will:

• Keep your source code on the UNIX machine. You need to install Micro Focus Enterprise Developer UNIX Components on this machine.
• Install Enterprise Developer for Eclipse on the your local Windows machine. You need to create a connection in Enterprise Developer to the remote UNIX machine and then create remote projects for the application's source files.

Upgrading your applications

The following outline shows an example approach to upgrading an application to Enterprise Developer:

1. Assess your existing processes for building and testing your applications.

   Discover any similarities and differences between your existing applications and what programming issues they resolve. Determine what project types and scenarios you need to handle in Enterprise Developer for Eclipse.

   Review the Compiler directives that are used to build the applications. Review these to ensure they are still valid.

   Note: You can use Micro Focus COBOL Analyzer to check your existing applications and assess what might need be to changed or what functionality is no longer supported.
2. Compile your existing sources at the command line:
   1. Ensure Micro Focus Enterprise Developer UNIX Components is installed on the machine that stores your sources.
   2. From a terminal window, set the environment for Micro Focus Enterprise Developer UNIX Components and build the existing application. Resolve any compilation issues and ensure that the application behaves as it did previously.
3. Create a Enterprise Developer project to handle your source code:
   1. Install Enterprise Developer for Eclipse on a local Windows machine.
   2. In Eclipse, create a connection to the machine that includes your sources and create a remote project.
   3. Add the application sources to the new project and set the following Compiler directives on the project:
      • SOURCETABSTOP"8"
      • COPYEXT",CBL,CPY"
   4. Add the Compiler directives that were used to compile the original project and are still valid to the new project.
   5. Build and debug the application using Eclipse.

      Ensure you get the same results using Eclipse as you did when you used Micro Focus Enterprise Developer UNIX Components on the remote machine (see step 2b).

4. Add more projects, programs and copybooks as required.
5. Review the Best Practice in Development Using Eclipse information in this document to ensure you achieve maximum productivity.
6. Experiment with various debugging options to find those that best meet your requirements.
7. Compile for debug and for release and ensure that the application performs as expected.
8. Create one or more template projects and distribute those across the entire development team.
9. Examine ways in which Eclipse can help to modernize your applications and processes.

For more details about these steps see the following sections and the Related Information.