Welcome

Visual COBOL Development Hub (Development Hub) is a part of the Visual COBOL product portfolio from Micro Focus which includes testing and developer productivity tools.

Development Hub is a companion of Visual COBOL for Eclipse. It enables the developers to use intelligent, integrated development tools in Eclipse while keeping the application source on a UNIX or Linux production-like server with access to middleware and test data. Developers get the power of Eclipse on their Windows or Linux desktop and can test their applications in a realistic environment without duplicating source code or emulating server behavior. With Visual COBOL, Visual COBOL Development Hub can be used for distributed development of COBOL for JVM applications.

You can use Development Hub in one of the following ways:

As a companion to Visual COBOL for Eclipse.
As a stand-alone application development environment.

Using Development Hub with Visual COBOL for Eclipse

If you use Development Hub in conjunction with Visual COBOL for Eclipse you can take full advantage of Visual COBOL for Eclipse's support for building and testing COBOL applications on the UNIX or Linux server from a locally installed Eclipse IDE.

You keep the project source code, databases and other services on the target UNIX or Linux platform while the Eclipse environment runs on the programmer's Windows or Linux desktop for maximum performance:

Using Development Hub with Visual COBOL for Eclipse

Source code is stored either on the target UNIX or Linux machine or within the source control system being used in Eclipse and checked out to the programmer's work area on the server. This source code is accessed from the Eclipse client via a variety of standard network methods. There is no need to copy source code to the programmer's local Windows or Linux desktop and then copy it back to the server for system or integration build and test.

Development Hub includes a debug engine which the Eclipse client accesses to debug COBOL applications. The COBOL code on the server can access local databases, middleware or other services without complex simulation or duplication of the services on the programmer's desktop. A lightweight and easy to manage protocol is used for debugging, particularly where access to the application's server is protected by a firewall.

Development Hub performs the application builds on the server with all messages (for example, warnings, errors and success messages) being returned to the Eclipse client.

Note: For more information refer to the product help of Visual COBOL for Eclipse on the Micro Focus Infocenter.

Using Development Hub as a stand-alone development environment

If you use Development Hub without Visual COBOL for Eclipse, you keep the project source code, databases and other services on the target UNIX or Linux platform and use the command line to edit, compile and debug the code directly on the target machine.

Visual COBOL Development Hub provides the COBOL compiler, the Animator and a variety of command line tools to help you maintain your existing application directly on target UNIX or Linux platform and to help you upgrade any existing Server Express applications to the Visual COBOL environment.

Note:

For information on how to use Development Hub for application development as a stand-alone product, refer to the rest of this product help.
Most references to Visual COBOL in this product help are for the IDE-based product, Visual COBOL for Eclipse. However, because Visual COBOL for Eclipse and Development Hub have some shared functionality, some references to Visual COBOL apply to Development Hub as well as Visual COBOL for Eclipse.