Modernize Your Applications and Processes

Following industry-standard development practices

Many source code control systems and Agile tools can be integrated into the Eclipse IDE.

You should also consider using continuous integration, which involves the automatic building and testing of an application after a change occurs to the source code. This method traps errors sooner in the development life cycle and can greatly improve efficiency and reduce costs.

Multi-user applications

Visual COBOL includes a Run Unit API to enable multiple users to simultaneously use an application based on COBOL code that was designed originally for a single user.

Developing Web-based applications

You can use Visual COBOL to migrate existing, core applications to a service-oriented architecture as Web services, and deploy them using Micro Focus COBOL Server and Enterprise Server, so that you can develop COBOL-based software components to be invoked across the Web.

Developing JVM applications

You can compile both new and existing COBOL as JVM COBOL managed code. This enables you to:

• Reuse existing COBOL business logic and data access in the Java Virtual Machine
• Access Java classes and features from COBOL applications
• Create and extend composite applications consisting of COBOL and Java code
• Reuse and extend Open ESQL applications

Both procedural and Object-Oriented (OO) COBOL are supported within the JVM. OO COBOL classes can inherit classes written in Java and vice versa.

The managed COBOL syntax includes many extensions to the COBOL language to support Java features; for example, the TRY ... CATCH syntax to enable exception handling in COBOL.

There are also certain directives that help integrate your managed COBOL with Java. For example, you can now expose the Linkage Section and entry points in your COBOL to other managed languages by compiling with the ILSMARTLINKAGE directive.