Welcome

Studio Enterprise Edition enables you to develop COBOL applications within Microsoft Visual Studio. You use the integrated development environment (IDE) in Visual Studio to edit, compile and debug COBOL applications. The IDE provides all the functionality to manage projects and build applications.

You can develop COBOL applications that run as .NET managed code in the .NET environment. You can also develop and compile applications to native COBOL code, as .exe or .dll. You then deploy and further debug the application under Server Enterprise Edition.

You can develop applications that have been migrated from the mainframe and that use mainframe technologies like CICS, JCL, and IMS. These compile to native COBOL code, as .exe or .dll. You then deploy and further debug the application under Server Enterprise Edition.

.NET managed code and unmanaged native code can interoperate within the same application, enabling you to exploit existing COBOL in the .NET environment.

Server Enterprise Edition is a companion to Studio Enterprise Edition. Server Enterprise Edition provides the run-time environment for running COBOL applications. .NET applications also require the Microsoft .NET Framework to be installed and this is available from the Microsoft Web site.

For help getting started:

1. To learn about COBOL development using Visual Studio, see the topics in the Visual Studio and COBOL section.
2. For a list of the various features for editing, building and debugging COBOL provided by the IDE, see Tips and Tricks with the IDE.
3. For information about the samples and tutorials supplied with this COBOL development system, see Tutorials on COBOL in the Visual Studio IDE, Demonstrations of .NET Managed Code and Samples Browser.
4. For examples of programming in .NET COBOL and comparison with the C# and VB.NET languages, see COBOL, C#, and VB.NET Comparison.

If you are a mainframe programmer:

We recommend you start with the Getting Started. This will walk you through the major components of the product and will provide you with some basic tutorials on how to use the IDE to develop mainframe applications. The Getting Started includes the following items:

1. Introduction, which gives an overview of the product and explains the mainframe capabilities.
2. A basic tutorial, which uses a mainframe application to guide you through using the IDE to develop, build and debug both an online and batch application.
3. Additional tutorials that show you, for example, how to create and use different mainframe projects that contain CICS, IMS, PL/I and JCL.
4. A detailed description of the samples available with this product.
5. An overview of how to move existing mainframe applications into the Visual Studio IDE.