Much of the edit and debug functionality in
Net Express is available in
Visual COBOL, but some of it has a different name or slightly different behavior. In addition there are some new features such as background parsing.
Data Tools The Net Express Data Tools are available as the Classic Data File Tool utility in Visual COBOL for Visual Studio.
Debugging Native Object-Oriented COBOL In Net Express you can examine an object while debugging OO COBOL and display the class that defined the object and also other objects derived
from that class. In Visual COBOL, you can also view the class information of native OO COBOL but not while debugging.
Mixed Language Debugging With Net Express you could debug mixed language applications. Visual COBOL does not support mixed language debugging of native code.
Program Breakpoints Program breakpoints are breakpoints that stop execution each time a specified program or entry point within the program is
called. They are supported in Visual COBOL, but by default their behavior is different from their behavior in Net Express
Remote Debugging The Net Express animserv utility used for debugging programs remotely has been replaced by cobdebugremote (or cobdebugremote64 when debugging 64-bit processes) in Visual COBOL.
Source Pool View The source pool view in Net Express showed all source files available in the project directory, regardless of whether or not they are used in the current build
type. This view is not available in Visual COBOL.