Features Added in Visual COBOL 2.3 Update 1

This release provides enhancements in the following areas:

Editor:

• COBOL editor:
  • You can now specify the increment for the COBOL and the standard line numbering from Window > Preferences > Micro Focus > COBOL > Editor > Line numbering.
  • You can now toggle single or multiple lines between commented and uncommented states.

Building applications:

• Environment variables - a new page, Build Environment, in the project's properties enables you to specify environment variables for your applications. You can also specify environment variables that only apply at run time on the run or debug configuration for the application.

This release provides support for automatic connection recovery to an active Java application server when an enterprise server region is restarted. This applies to COBOL resource adapters.

This release provides support for performing code analysis at the command line using Ant which enables the integration of code analysis in CI frameworks. Features include:

• Support for performing code analysis at the command line using the project's .cobolBuild Ant script and specifying a target.
• New Ant targets for code analysis - analyze and build.and.analyze. These enable you to only run analysis and produce analysis data or to build and produce build artifacts as well as analysis data.
• New Micro Focus Ant task, analysis, for the .cobolBuild file. A parameter for this task enables you to specify whether the build fails or continues when code analysis results are received.
• New parameters for code analysis for the cobol Ant task - analysisData, analysisDataDir.
• New Ant type, ruleList, for the .cobolBuild file - enables you to specify the rules to execute.
• Support for running analysis using a custom .cobolBuild file from outside of the project directory or the workspace.

See the Micro Focus Ant User Manual in the Micro Focus Infocenter for more details on the new task, types and parameters.

The code coverage reports are now integrated with the IDE and with the editor. Features include:

• A new Code Coverage view (Eclipse) showing the statistics of what percentage of the code has executed.
• Navigation from the Code Coverage view (Eclipse) to the missed and covered blocks in the editor.
• Colorization in the editor of blocks that were executed (covered blocks) or not (missed blocks).

The following Compiler directives contain new parameters in this release:

• ILMAIN - you now specify the main entry point for the executable program, which can be specified either as class-name::method-name, or just as method-name. For example, ILMAIN"classA::methodB" or ILMAIN"methodB". The first format can be used to distinguish between multiple methods with the same name in different classes.

  This directive is now available for JVM COBOL.

• OOCTRL - a new parameter, +/-A, as been added. Set this parameter to -A to allow ActiveX controls in your COBOL application to use classes and methods in the OLE class library. The default is +A, which does not allow it.

This release provides improved security and increased support for more file types. Features include:

• Certain aspects of Enterprise Server security are honored when you attempt to access data sets. If the Enterprise Server region has security enabled, logon details must be authenticated before you can access the data set. If the details are unable to be authenticated, access is denied.
• When using a record layout, certain data is now validated at field level (to ensure the contents is compatible with its picture string ) and record level (to ensure the record length matches the layout size).
• Full editing support has been added for variable block sequential files and relative files. Full editing is also available for line sequential files, as long as they do not contain any binary data.

This release includes various improvements in the Content Assist support for COBOL in the following areas:

• Native COBOL - support is now available for OCCURS statements
• Managed COBOL - suggestions are now available in the working storage section and in the following scenarios:
  • Arithmetic expressions in method arguments
  • Casting variables and some expressions
  • Creating arrays using the TABLE OF expression and indexers
  • Generics
  • Implements and inherits
  • Javadoc comments are now displayed (Eclipse)
  • Type name filtering in constructs and attributes
  • Managed type headers, method heathers and index headers.
  • Nested types
  • SIZE OF expressions
  • String concatenations
  • TYPE OF constructs
  • Unqualified members access - using the SELF:: or SUPER:: syntax
• Support for float literals has been enhanced.
• Suggestions are now available for more COBOL verbs such as TRY and RAISE (in managed COBOL) and EXAMINE, INSPECT, SEARCH, GO TO, INITIALIZE, INVOKE, and UNLOCK (in native COBOL).
• There are new IDE configuration settings for inserting suggestions and for case handling.

• A new indexed file format, IDXFORMAT12, has been introduced to improve file maintenance and recovery procedures when using the rebuild utility. This file format is similar in structure and use to IDXFORMAT8. Where the two formats differ is that an IDXFORMAT12 file has an accompanying side file (.idx file) containing the indexed key information.

  You can use this type of file with the new rebuild /q option. This rebuild process is considerably quicker than other rebuild processes such as a data scrape or rebuild /p.

• Faster SORT operations for fixed block records - when using the DFSORT emulation, the performance when sorting fixed block records has greatly improved.

The following library routines are new in this release:

• CBL_CODESET_SET_MAPPING - enables you to change the codeset in effect.
• CBL_RUNTIME_ERROR - forces an application to terminate with a run-time error condition.

This release provides the following enhancements:

• Updates to the test runner command line options:
  • Using the -testcases: option, you can now specify a list of test cases to execute.
  • The new -report:markdown option enables you to produce test reports in github style markdown format (.md).

    You can use various Third-Party utilities such as pandoc to convert .md files into HTML or PDF format.

• Support for running test suites using dynamic metadata - you use an entry point in the test case and, when it is called during the preparation stage of the test case, you can change various fields exposed through mfunit.cpy to update the metadata of the test case.

  This is an alternative to specifying metadata for a test case in the text fixture file (.mfu).

• Support is now available for creating and debugging test cases written in procedural managed COBOL (procedural code compiled as managed). The following new test runners are supplied:
  • mfurunil, for .NET COBOL code
  • mfurunj (Windows) and cobmfurunj (UNIX) for JVM COBOL code.

The following enhancements have been made to the managed COBOL syntax:

• A new command line utility, mfjarprogmap, is available to allow you to create the necessary Java property file when calling COBOL programs that have been compiled as part of a package.
• You can now create generic iterators.
• You can now use the Profiler utility to obtain detailed statistics on the run-time performance of managed COBOL applications.

The following items are new features of the native COBOL syntax:

Class condition tests

New and updated class condition tests are available for DBCS, KANJI, and JAPANESE.

The product Help now includes a quick and easy to use syntax guide for developers who need to learn OO COBOL syntax when modernizing COBOL applications for the Java or .NET platforms. The guide includes side-by-side equivalent syntax for COBOL, C#, VB and Java.

There are a few restrictions when running in this environment:

• The cob flag -p, which enables profiling, is not supported on Red Hat platforms.
• The cobmode utility is not supported.
• SQL functionality is restricted to OpenESQL support (ODBC and JDBC) only.
• The RM File Manager (RMFM) is not supported.