This release provides enhancements in the following areas:
Integration with Eclipse
This release provides enhancements in the following areas:
- Support for Eclipse 4.6 -
Enterprise Developer now ships with the 64-bit Eclipse 4.6. By default, Eclipse is configured to compile applications for 32-bit and the default
target platform for new projects is 32-bit.
Note: Applications that were created using
Enterprise Developer 2.3 Update 2 and earlier must be recompiled in
Enterprise Developer 3.0 to ensure they will compile and execute properly.
The 32-bit Eclipse is still supported on 64-bit Windows platforms and you need to manually install the 32-bit IDE and a 32-bit
Java
You can install the
Enterprise Developer plugin in other instances of Eclipse (32-bit or 64-bit). Support for Eclipse 4.2 and 4.3 has been discontinued.
- Rename refactoring - enables you to rename COBOL elements such as variables and identifiers, section and paragraph names,
classes, and methods across a program or a workspace. Renaming helps improve the readability of an item or make its purpose
clearer. Two preferences for renaming are supported in Eclipse - directly in the editor or using a
Rename dialog box that offers a preview.
- Dependency paths - it is now possible to specify
dependency paths to folders that are outside the project folder.
- Standalone files:
- It is now possible to specify the locations where the IDE will search for the program symbol files (.idy) for standalone files:
Window > Preferences > Micro Focus > COBOL > Standalone Files > Program Symbols (.IDY).
- It is now possible to use the Eclipse debug configurations to debug standalone files, including core dump files.
In previous versions of
Enterprise Developer, standalone files were known as "single files". References to "single files" in the IDE and the product help have been changed
to "standalone files".
- Error reporting - errors reported in the
Console view now include a link for opening the source file at the line where the error originates.
- Editor improvements - an option for removing trailing whitespaces has been added to the IDE preferences for the COBOL
and the PL/I
editor.
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Application Server JCA support for Enterprise Server
In this release, EJBGEN has been updated to generate an EAR file as a part of the COBOL deployment process, which enables
you to deploy EJBs to Java Application Server.
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Application Workflow Manager in Enterprise Developer
This release includes improvements in the following areas:
- Application Workflow Manager model editor:
- The definition of linked element types and properties has been improved. Some required model objects and relationships are
now generated automatically.
- The editor now detects unused references in a model.
- Application Workflow Manager modeling:
- Basic resource processing has been extended to support mass processing where appropriate.
- The AWM function package now includes the following new tools:
- "Return Property Value" - enables you to map the values of input parameters to output parameters.
- "Validate Value" - enables you to validate a filename against a specified naming convention.
- You can now specify enabling conditions in a more granular way. An additional condition type has been introduced to hide actions
or properties. For example, hiding an action from the context menu of an element.
- The Eclipse linked element type now enables the label and label decorator to be automatically set to mirror their representation
in other Eclipse views if they are not explicitly modeled.
- Table columns can be modeled as a combination of two or more properties - for example, to combine a date and time property
value.
- Additional standard icons.
- Mainframe Access (MFA) integration and the MVS function package:
- MVS resources are now available as linked element types.
- The following tools have been added to the MVS function package:
- Delete MVS data set or member
- Rename MVS data set or member
- Copy MVS file to clipboard, Paste MVS file from clipboard
- Get data set or member attributes
- Improvements have been made to copy and paste support in the MVS Explorer.
- File mapping between z/OS and local files now supports additional local code pages.
- The editor context menu contains a "Submit to Mainframe" action when a file is opened from the MVS Explorer with an extension
which is mapped to JCL in the File Mappings view.
- Some of the new MVS function package tools replace existing ISPF function package tools resulting in improved performance
of the tools.
- The sample model "MVS Projects Sample Application" has been improved by including some of the new AWM MVS function package
features.
- AWM is now available as a standalone feature which you can install into a separate instance of the Eclipse IDE installed on
your machine.
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AppMaster Builder
The AMB Program Painter has been enhanced to enable collapsing and expanding multiple-line paragraphs and working-storage
such as WS01.
Building applications
This release provides the following improvements:
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Character Encoding
A new utility, cobutf8, is available. cobutf8 enables you to seamlessly run applications that require non-UTF-8 character
encodings in a UNIX environment that is using a UTF-8 locale.
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CICS Web Services
In this release, CICS Web services support includes the following additional features:
- CICS JSON Web services for request/response and RESTful JSON. CICS Web Services support has been extended to allow JSON/REST
requests to be used in both requestor and provider mode.
- Use of container-based mappings
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COBOL language enhancements
This release includes the following enhancements to the COBOL syntax:
- The DISPLAY-OF and NATIONAL-OF intrinsic functions are now able to process conversions using any IBM CCSID value.
See
To install a CCSID Table for details on installing the required CCSID table.
The following enhancements are available in managed COBOL:
- To avoid an exception being thrown if an explicit conversion fails, use the AS IF syntax, which results in the target object
being set to null and no exception thrown. See
cast expressions in the
Expressions topic for more information.
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Code analysis
This release provides the following improvements:
- A new group of predefined rule sets for 64-bit readiness is now included in
Enterprise Developer.
- Support for importing code analysis reports produced with one of Micro Focus's advanced tools for code analysis, Enterprise
Analyzer or COBOL Analyzer.
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Code coverage
The following improvements are available within the IDE:
- Information about unexecuted programs - the code coverage reports in the
Code Coverage window now show the unexecuted programs.
- Code coverage support for standalone COBOL files - you can import existing code coverage reports in the
Code Coverage window and use it to supply code coverage information for standalone files.
- Remote code coverage files - in the
Code Coverage window in Eclipse, it is now possible to import code coverage report files that are stored in remote locations.
- Test coverage files - it is now possible to use a test coverage file to debug applications.
If you are using Test Coverage from the command line, you can now use the following features:
- A new Compiler directive, COLLECTION - the directive enables test coverage to gather information about unexecuted programs.
In the IDE, this directive is automatically set on a project when you enable code coverage for it.
- A new command line utility, tcutil - the utility enables you to convert the test coverage binary results file into XML format.
- It is now possible to integrate test coverage in a Continuous Integration (CI) system. You can use tcutil and an XSLT processor
to transform test coverage data into a format suitable for including in a CI.
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Compiler control
The following Compiler directive are new in this release:
- COLLECTION - provides a mechanism for code coverage to identify unexecuted programs.
The following Compiler directives have been updated:
- ALIGN - this directive has new parameters (FIXED and OPT) that can be used in conjunction with the integer taken, which can
aid performance. The default is ALIGN"8 OPT"; see the Comments section of the
ALIGN Compiler directive topic for details of its affect on memory boundaries.
- ARITH - this directive emulates the IBM mainframe option of the same name. Defines the maximum number of digits for numeric
data items.
- FASTINIT - this directive is now on by default when setting the MF dialect; it remains not set by default for other dialects.
- SSRANGE - this directive now has an additional option (3), which permits zero-length reference modified items at run time
when bounds checking.
- XMLPARSE - includes a change in the way entities are processed when XMLPARSE(COMPAT) is set
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Data File Tools
This release provides the following enhancements to Data File Tools:
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Database access -
HCO for DB2 LUW
This release provides a new DB2(QUALIFY-CALL) Compiler directive that enables stored procedure invocations to include a schema
name.
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Database access - HCOSS
This release provides a new Offline Schema Extract feature – a batch solution that migrates a z/OS DB2 catalog to SQL Server
without direct access to z/OS DB2.
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Database access - MySQL
This release provides support for MySQL with ODBC.
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Database access - OpenESQL
This release provides the following new features:
- Statement prefixes for the SQL(CHECK) Compiler directive that enable the creation of temporary tables and other SQL objects
at compile time, ensuring full SQL syntax checking during compilation.
- SQL(OPTIMIZECURSORS) Compiler directive that enhances processing for traditional embedded SQL cursors that use WITH HOLD and
FOR UPDATE clauses.
- SQL(CLOSE_ON_COMMIT) Compiler directive to leave cursors open for further result set processing after a commit.
- SQL(GEN-SQLCA) Compiler directive that generates an SQLCA similar to the z/OS DB2 directive STDSQL(YES).
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Debugging applications
This release provides the following new features:
- Debugging core dump files without a project.
- Reverse debugging
(Technology Preview) - it is now possible to step backwards through an application to view a recording of the previous steps executed in the current
debug session. Input is not accepted while viewing recorded execution.
Restriction: Reverse Debug and Live Recording functionality is licensed and installed separately from
undo.io. You can enable reverse debug functionality by downloading the extension from the
Micro Focus Marketplace.
This functionality is only supported on the following platforms:
- Red Hat Linux (x86 and x64)
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 12 SP2 (x64 only)
- CentOS 8.2 (x64 only)
- Ubuntu Linux 20.04.x (LTS) (x64 only)
Additional restrictions apply. For details, see the
Reverse Debug and Live Recording topic in the
Known Issues and Restrictions section of this documentation.
- COBOL Live Recording debug configuration
(Technology Preview) - it is now possible to record an application execution and view its execution path in the debugger. This method of debugging
enables stepping both forwards and backwards, but does not accept input.
Restriction: Reverse Debug and Live Recording functionality is licensed and installed separately from
undo.io. You can enable reverse debug functionality by downloading the extension from the
Micro Focus Marketplace.
This functionality is only supported on the following platforms:
- Red Hat Linux (x86 and x64)
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 12 SP2 (x64 only)
- CentOS 8.2 (x64 only)
- Ubuntu Linux 20.04.x (LTS) (x64 only)
Additional restrictions apply. For details, see the
Reverse Debug and Live Recording topic in the
Known Issues and Restrictions section of this documentation.
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Deployment on multiple platforms
This release provides support for deploying JVM COBOL applications on multiple platforms. You can compile an application
on one platform (such as Windows) and then deploy its class files to a different platform (such as Linux or UNIX).
Some features of the COBOL language, however, are platform-specific and their behavior on different platforms might vary.
See
Multi-Platform Deployment of JVM COBOL Applications
for details.
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Documentation
The following new sections have been added to the product help:
- Where do I start? - located on the launch page of the product help, this section provides the information you need in order to get started
depending on which aspects of the product you need to get to grips with first.
- Multi-Platform Deployment of JVM COBOL Applications - includes information about how to ensure the portability of your JVM COBOL applications between Windows and UNIX or Linux
platforms.
- Configuring an SSL Client Connection to a Mainframe - includes instructions about how to configure client applications to connect to MFA and z/Server mainframe via AT-TLS in
a zOS environment.
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Enterprise COBOL 6.1 compatibility
The following features have been added to support Enterprise COBOL 6.1:
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Enterprise Server
Improvements are available in the following areas:
Integration with
Eclipse:
- Exporting an enterprise server definition from the IDE in XML format.
- Importing an enterprise server into the IDE using its definition file.
EXEC CICS TRANSFORM:
- Enterprise Server now supports the XMLTODATA and DATATOXML options of this API.
JCL spool
The JCL spool repository infrastructure has been redesigned to significantly improve its performance. The improvements include:
- A more disk-efficient infrastructure, reducing the space required by the spool files by up to 75% in some cases.
- Improved internal indexing, resulting in quicker generation of messages and sysout records during processing.
- Improved navigation of spool queues: job status
Complete replaces the
Output,
Out Hold, and
Printed statuses, and completed jobs with any combination of sysout files can be displayed in a single list.
- Increased range of job numbers, from five digits to seven digits.
Important: These changes are automatically in place for new enterprise servers that you create. To enable these updates to existing enterprise
servers, you must run a conversion utility before any JCL processing is permitted. Follow the
To run the spool conversion utility process, detailed in
Significant Changes in Behavior, for each existing JES-enabled enterprise server you have.
Long user IDs and passwords:
- Enterprise Server now supports user IDs and passwords of up to 100 characters. It is possible to map IDs from long to short
(or vice versa) to enable compatibility with programs that do not support long names.
SHA-256 support in DemoCA:
- By default, the Demonstration Certificate Authority (CA) now signs certificates with SHA-256. This ensures that the demonstration
or evaluation certificates will be accepted by modern browsers and other software that has enhanced security requirements.
Syslog auditing:
- Enterprise Server now supports auditing using syslog events, which can be consumed by a wide range of Security Information
and Event Management (SIEM) products. This replaces the Audit Manager auditing solution. Syslog auditing provides a much more
efficient auditing mechanism, with significantly less impact on overall speed.
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IMS support
A new MFSGEN Compiler directive, CONTMVS, has been added to enable the compiler to parse MFS continuation lines (those continued
without a terminating comma) by treating the line that follows as a comment line, just as is done on the mainframe.
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Mainframe Access (MFA)
This release provides the following improvements:
- Running MFA client in 64-bit processes - you can now call the MFA client modules from 64-bit applications and take advantage
of the wider memory addressing available to those modules.
- MFA client CTF tracing - MFDAS now supports CTF tracing. This provides better diagnostics of issues and helps increase turnaround
on issues. CTF is common to a number of Micro Focus modules so cross-component logging can be turned on from a single place.
- MFA and
z/Server holder close coupling - MFA server can now start the
z/Server holder as a subtask in its own address space. This helps improve the performance as MFA can hand-off AWM sessions directly
to the
z/Server scheduler without instructing AWM to redirect them.
- Endevor functions - the following functions are now available to Enterprise Sync and MFDAS: DELETE, DIRX, GENERATE, GETENQI,
LIST, MOVE, SIGNIN and TRANSFER.
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The Micro Focus Unit Testing Framework
The Micro Focus Unit Testing Framework is now available from within the IDE. It includes much of the architecture you would
expect of an xUnit framework to create, compile, run and debug unit tests, including the following features:
- A unit test project template.
- A test creation wizard that enables you to generate tests from your source code.
- Code templates for each element of a test case.
- Support for running tests with Code Coverage enabled.
- The Micro Focus Unit Testing view, where you can manage your test runs and view test output.
There has been a number of enhancements to the command line version of the Micro Focus Unit Testing Framework. Support has
been added for:
- Running test fixture files using Apache Ant.
- Applying traits to your test cases, then performing a test run based on those traits.
- Applying a high, medium, or low priority to test cases, which affects the order in which they are run.
- Adding coded command line options directly into your test code.
- Using a test run-specific configuration file, in which you can set environment variables.
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PL/I support
Enhancements are available in the following areas:
PL/I debugging
PL/I compiler and run-time system
Support has been added to enable the following:
- The UNSIGNED data type - the PL/I Compiler now supports the UNSIGNED attribute for FIXED BINARY data items. In addition to
the basic language support, the SIGNED, UNSIGNED, ISIGNED, and IUNSIGNED new built-in functions have been implemented. These
features offer an improved compatibility with other languages such as C or C++.
- New built-in functions - UTF8(), UTF8TOCHAR(), UTF8TOWCHAR(), and SUBTRACT(). These new build-in functions make it easier
to modernize migrated PL/I applications.
- The ENTRY LIMITED data attribute - the Open PL/I Compiler now accepts and fully supports the LIMITED attribute on ENTRY declarations.
This increases the compatibility of the Micro Focus PL/I Compiler with IBM's PL/I for applications that you are migrating
from the mainframe.
- Support for processing of JSON data - a number of new built-in functions are available for processing JSON text. This enables
you to modernize your PL/I applications by enabling them to interpret, create and process JSON data.
JSONGETARRAYEND
|
JSONPUTARRAYEND
|
JSONGETMEMBER
|
JSONGETARRAYSTART
|
JSONPUTARRAYSTART
|
JSONGETVALUE
|
JSONGETCOLON
|
JSONPUTCOLON
|
JSONPUTMEMBER
|
JSONGETCOMMA
|
JSONPUTCOMMA
|
JSONPUTVALUE
|
JSONGETOBJECTEND
|
JSONPUTOBJECTEND
|
JSONVALID
|
JSONGETOBJECTSTART
|
JSONPUTOBJECTSTART
|
|
PL/I macro preprocessor
A number of enhancements have been made to improve the compatibility between the PL/I macro preprocessor and IBM's macro preprocessor
which helps ease the effort required to migrate PL/I applications to new platforms. Support is available for:
- RESCAN in the ANSWER statement.
- The shorthand "<>" syntax for indicating "Not Equal To".
- Break characters in hex literal constants to improve readability of code.
- A new option, -tagdbg, that annotates macros and %FILE/%ENDFILE statements with line numbers and the source file which injected
them.
- The -caseasis option which allows source code to flow through to the
mdeck.pp file retaining the case as entered.
- Macros with a null parameter list.
- The LEAVE statement.
- Improved macro preprocessing speed.
- New built-in functions: SYSENDIAN() and MFPHOSTNAME().
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Rumba terminal emulator
Enterprise Developer now ships with Micro Focus
Rumba+ Desktop
10.1 SP1.
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XML processing
XML PARSE now works in a purely managed COBOL environment. It is now supported in JVM COBOL and, in both .NET and JVM COBOL,
it has a fully managed implementation. XML PARSE working without calling out to native code ensures it can be used in restricted
rights environments.
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z/Server
The
z/Server configuration has been simplified through the use of a unified scheduler. This replaces the three different types of scheduler,
STC, CEA and JOB, that were used previously for starting different types of user servers.
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