MERANT Micro Focus Server Express™

Getting Started

MERANT™

Issue 2
March 2000

MERANT has made every effort to ensure that this book is correct and accurate, but reserves the right to make changes without notice at its sole discretion at any time.

The software described in this document is supplied under a license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license, and in particular any warranty of fitness of MERANT products for any particular purpose is expressly excluded and in no event will MERANT be liable for any consequential loss.

Micro Focus® and Animator® are registered trademarks of MERANT International Limited.

Dialog System™, Directory Facility™, Application Server™, MERANT™, Micro Focus COBOL™, Object COBOL™, and Server Express™ are trademarks of MERANT International Limited.

IBM® is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.

UNIX® is a registered trademark of X/Open Company Limited.

Copyright© 2000 MERANT Limited
All Rights Reserved

Preface

This book introduces Server Express, and explains what it consists of and how to use it. You should read this book before installing Server Express and before reading any of the other documentation.

Audience

You should be familiar with the COBOL language and with your operating system. You should read this Getting Started book and be familiar with the COBOL development cycle described in the Server Express User's Guide before reading other books in the book set.

Environments

Micro Focus COBOL systems are available for Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, and for many varieties of UNIX.

Some of the books supplied with this COBOL system are generic across all these environments. Other books are specific to your operating system, but might contain some generic chapters. The chapter Welcome! in this Getting Started book explains this in detail.

Conventions

In the books, unless otherwise stated:

• References to UNIX apply to all operating systems that are compatible with UNIX System V, Release 4.0 or later, complying with the System V Interface Definition (SVID).

Notation

The notation used in the books is as follows:

• Enter refers to the carriage-return or Enter key. Where commands to be typed are shown, the Enter key is not shown. It is treated as implicit that the Enter key must be pressed at the end of the line.
  
  
• Hexadecimal numbers are enclosed in quotation marks and preceded by a lower-case "x" or "h"; for example, x"9D", h"03FF". The "x" is used when the hexadecimal number represents a character string; the "h" when it represents a numerical value.
  
  
• With COMP-X and COMP-5, PIC X is used rather than PIC 99. Unlike PIC 99, PIC X shows the length of the data item directly and so demonstrates more clearly the use of COMP-X, which is to define a binary item of the specified number of bytes.

Command Lines

The notation used to describe the format of command lines is as follows:

• Words printed in italics are generic terms representing names to be devised by you.

  You must type them in upper or lower case as shown.

• Square brackets [ ] mean the material inside them is optional.
  
  
• Braces { } mean you must choose from the options inside them.
  
• An ellipsis (...) following { } or [ ] means you can repeat the material inside them. The number of repetitions allowed is unlimited unless otherwise stated.
  
• If a command line does not fit across the page, it is continued on the next line; the continuation line is indented.
  
  
• The books might refer you to the Release Notes for details specific to a particular UNIX platform.
  
  
• All command line formats and examples are for the standard UNIX shell, the Bourne shell. If you are using another shell, see your UNIX documentation for the appropriate formats.
  
  
• If examples that use environment variables do not show them being exported to the shell, you should treat them as if they have been exported.
  
  
• Some keystrokes using function keys or the Alt or Ctrl keys are not available on all UNIX platforms. The appendix UNIX Key Usage Chart lists how the keystrokes shown in the books map onto actual keystrokes.

Notes

• F1=Help appears on every menu in character-mode Micro Focus software. It invokes a help screen describing the current menu. F1=Help is not described in the documentation.
  
  
• What appears on your screen might differ in minor ways (for example, version numbers) from representations in the books. This will not affect the operation of your software.