Applications that use the native Object-Oriented (OO) COBOL syntax will probably require significant work to migrate them to managed COBOL. We recommend that you contact Micro Focus support for extra help with this.
Applications that use the native OO COBOL syntax will probably require significant work to migrate them to managed COBOL. We recommend that you contact Micro Focus support for extra help with this.
Some of the significant differences between native OO COBOL and managed COBOL are:
- Managed code is typed, unlike native OO COBOL. The Compiler enforces type checking on object references in managed COBOL. This is different to native OO COBOL where all object references are simply of type "object" and can hold a reference to instances of any class of object.
- Object references must be defined at level-01 in managed COBOL, because the compiled code and the run-time system now conform to the rules for type-safe code. This conforms with the ISO2002 COBOL standard.
- The Micro Focus OO class libraries are not supported for managed COBOL.
- The CLASS-OBJECT syntax is not available in managed COBOL.
- Multiple inheritance is not supported in native OO COBOL, although it is part of the ISO 2002 standard. Managed COBOL supports single inheritance of classes, but you can inherit (implement) multiple interfaces.
- Interface files (.if) and the vocabularies syntax do not have an equivalent in managed COBOL.
