Micro Focus Visual COBOL 2.3 for Visual Studio 2012 > Welcome > Product Information > Installing Visual COBOL for Visual Studio > After Installing

After Installing

You are now ready to run Visual COBOL. From the Windows taskbar click Start > All Programs > Micro Focus Visual COBOL > Visual COBOL for Visual Studio nnnn.

Note: The Start menu is not available on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. You use the Start screen to invoke programs.

Code generation issues in .NET Framework version 4.6

Code generation issues in Microsoft's 64-bit JIT (just-in-time) compiler delivered as part of .NET version 4.6 can result in incorrect execution of some COBOL code compiled to .NET. Version 4.6 of the .NET Framework is currently shipped as default with Visual Studio 2015 and Microsoft's Windows 10. The problems include incorrect execution of MOVE and STRING statements applied to alphanumeric operands, and incorrect execution of the ROUNDED phrase for arithmetic statements.
Some of these issues only seem to be reproducible in COBOL language applications compiled to .NET and some can be reproduced in other languages (C# or Visual Basic).

These problems have been reported and acknowledged by Microsoft and it is our belief that they either have resolutions or are working on fixes for all of them.

Until these issues have been confirmed as resolved by Microsoft, Micro Focus recommends that managed COBOL code should not be executed on the .NET Framework 4.6 platform. For further information about these issues and guidelines on how to disable the latest version of the 64-bit JIT compiler, see RyuJIT Bug Advisory and Troubleshooting RyuJIT.

Note:

For applications created with earlier Micro Focus products or earlier versions of Visual COBOL, note the following:

Building Applications

If, after upgrading to this version of Visual COBOL, you start receiving unexpected build errors when compiling an existing multi-project solution, this may be a result of enabling parallel project builds in this release. These are a couple of examples of issues that might be causing these errors:

Using file references to project outputs in the same solution. You need to use project-to-project references instead.
Use Project > Project Dependencies to manage the project dependencies and build order within your solution.
A customized build process such as one that is using pre- or post- build events.

If resolving any of these issues does not help resolve the build errors, consider disabling the parallel build support - click Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > Build and Run and set maximum number of parallel project builds to 1.

Note: Parallel builds are not supported with Personal Edition licensing.

Database Access: Managed applications using SQL(DBMAN=ODBC) that were compiled in Visual COBOL 2.1 Update 1 must be recompiled in Visual COBOL 2.3.
Existing Applications: Application executables that were compiled using earlier Micro Focus products must be recompiled from the sources using Visual COBOL.

Please refer to the Start Here and Product Information sections in your product Help. Here, you will find information on getting started including tutorials and demonstration programs.

Note:

To view the help in Visual Studio 2012, ensure that the Visual Studio Help Library is pointing to local help. From the Visual Studio menu click Help > Set Help Preferences > Launch in Help Browser.
For full details of the Visual Studio 2012 Help system, see the locally installed Microsoft Help Viewer 2.0 Help, which is available from Help menu in the IDE.
On Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, an issue with Microsoft Help Viewer 2.0 and Internet Explorer's security being turned on can cause the Help content to be displayed as raw HTML code. To resolve the issue, you need to turn off the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration (IE ESC) for both administrators and users. Check the Microsoft Windows help for more information on how to do this.