Generating a COBOL Console Client from a WSDL File

Restriction: This topic applies only when the Enterprise Server feature is enabled.

You can generate a full COBOL client console application starting from a WSDL file that was generated using the Interface Mapping Toolkit (IMTK), or created using some other method. You can deploy the client application to Enterprise Server. The generated application files consist of the following, where by default, filename is the file prefix of the WSDL file:

filename-app.cbl: Main COBOL program
filename-proxy.cbl: Proxy COBOL program called by the main COBOL program
filename-copy.cpy: Copybook containing working storage definitions

Visual COBOL adds these generated files as a new project in the current solution. The new project name is the same as the WSDL file prefix.

Generate from the IDE

We provide two methods you can use to generate WSDL client applications and/or service interfaces from the Visual COBOL IDE:

New Web Service Client Application from WSDL project

When you create a new project using the Web Service Client Application from WSDL template, Visual COBOL automatically generates the client application when it creates the project.

Service Interface and Client in an Existing Project

You can generate a client application and/or service interface from any WSDL file included in an existing Visual COBOL project.

When you generate just a service interface, Visual COBOL adds the resulting service interface file and skeleton COBOL program to the existing project.

When you generate a client application, Visual COBOL adds the resulting files to a subfolder in the project.

Note: Before generating a client, you can optionally change the default string length to use for unbounded strings and the default array size to use for unbounded arrays. The preset defaults are:

Default string length:	256
Default array size:	256

See To set client generation properties for instructions.

Generate from the Command Line

Generation from the command line is fully documented in the imtkmake command, ls2ws command and ws2ls command topics.