Features Added in Visual COBOL 2.2 Update 2

Eclipse

Visual COBOL provides the following new functionality and improvements:

• Support for Eclipse 4.2 and 4.3 - Visual COBOL ships with Eclipse 3.8 but also supports Eclipse 4.2 and 4.3 (the 32-bit IDE only). To use Visual COBOL with a newer version of Eclipse, you need to install Visual COBOL first and then use the installeclipseplugins.bat script in %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Micro Focus\Visual COBOL\installer (Windows) or installeclipseplugins script in /opt/microfocus/VisualCOBOL/installer (UNIX). See Installing into other instances of Eclipse for more details.
• Remote JVM COBOL projects - this release provides enhanced support for remote JVM COBOL projects.
• Remote project connections - the diagnosis tool for remote connection issues has been improved. There is now a client-side diagnosis tool and a server-side diagnosis tool for diagnosing connection problems to remote projects and connections to your Visual COBOL Development Hub. You should run both tools for a complete diagnosis.

Character Set Enhancements

Code Analysis

This release of Visual COBOL provides Dead Code analysis for COBOL programs that enables you to find unreferenced items or any piece of code that can't be reached .

Database Access

The following new features are available in database access support:

COBSQL

In Eclipse, the new KEEPCOMP directive resolves COMP/COMP-5 issues with Oracle applications on little-endian platforms.

HCO for DB2 LUW

This release introduces GEN-HV-FROM-GROUP - a new DB2 ECM compiler directive option, that generates host variables for all elementary data items when a multiple-level group variable is used in a FETCH or singleton SELECT DB2 statement.

OpenESQL

This version provides the following new OpenESQL features:

• Support for SQL Server 2014.
• New SQL Compiler directive options:
  • DETECTDATE=SERVER - resolves host variables alignment with column data types in an SQL table.
  • GEN-HV-FROM-GROUP - generates host variables for all elementary data items when a multiple-level group variable is used in a FETCH or singleton SELECT SQL statement.
• Sample applications - the following native COBOL SQL sample applications are new with this version:
  • Get Diagnostics - demonstrates how to use GET DIAGNOSTICS EXEC SQL calls to get diagnostic information from various DBMSs.
  • LOB Data Types - Demonstrates how to INSERT and SELECT LOB data in a native application using various DBMSs.

XA switch modules

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

The following XA switch module updates are available in this version:

• Oracle switch module - Windows and UNIX platforms :
  • Supports User Impersonation when statically registered.
  • Enables you to specify which XA resource definitions use User Impersonation.
  • Now compiled with one source file, rather than two.
• SQL Server switch module - Windows platforms only:
  • Enables you to specify which XA resource definitions use User Impersonation.
  • Now compiled with one source file, rather than two.

External Security Facility (ESF)

The Enterprise Server External Security Facility (ESF) now supports caching the results of some security queries. This can improve the performance of enterprise server instances and of the MFDS when they are configured to use external security.

To enable caching, you need to set non-zero values for the Cache limit (maximum size of the cache) and Cache TTL (Time To Live, or how long before a cached result expires) settings on the MFDS Security tab, the Default ES Security tab, or on the Security tab for an individual enterprise server. (Currently, the cache settings for Security Managers have no effect; you need to set cache parameters on one of the three Security pages mentioned earlier.)

For more information, see http://supportline.microfocus.com/examplesandutilities/doxygen/caching.html.

Tunables