Introduction to COBOL Development in Visual Studio

Visual COBOL enables you to develop native COBOL applications as well as .NET managed code applications.

You use the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE to develop, build and debug your applications. You can then deploy and further debug the application under the run-time system provided by COBOL Server.

You use the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) to develop, build and debug COBOL applications, whether they are built as native or managed COBOL. The IDE provides all the functionality to manage projects and debug applications. It includes:

• Templates for creating COBOL projects such as Windows applications and console applications, and also your own COBOL project types
• Colorization of the COBOL language when editing and debugging
• Background parsing of COBOL
• Information provided when hovering over COBOL variables
• Debugging that is sensitive to COBOL and includes all the usual features such as stepping, watch windows and breakpoints
• Querying 64-bit execution environments

For native COBOL, programs compile to .exe, .dll, .int or .gnt and they execute under the COBOL Server.

.NET COBOL compiles to Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL), and they execute in conjunction with the CLR, just like programs in other .NET languages, such as C#. Applications written in .NET COBOL need the COBOL Server as it enables them to run in the .NET environment.

Both new and existing COBOL can be compiled as .NET managed code. This enables you to:

• Reuse existing COBOL business logic and data access across the .NET environment
• Access .NET Framework classes and features from COBOL applications including Windows Forms and Web Forms
• Create and extend composite applications consisting of COBOL, C#, VB.NET, C++ and ASP.NET
• Reuse and extend Open ESQL applications

Both procedural and OO COBOL are supported within the .NET. OO COBOL classes can inherit classes written in other Microsoft .NET languages and vice versa.

The COBOL syntax includes a number of extensions to support .NET features. For example, the TRY ... CATCH syntax is now included to enable exception handling in COBOL.

There are some programming techniques, COBOL syntax and functionality that are applicable to unmanaged COBOL only and not to .NET COBOL.