There are several aspects of compiling and building applications that behave differently in
Visual COBOL. You might need to change the project properties and update some of the Compiler directives and settings that you previously
used.
Output File Formats Each project compiles into a single file (.dll, .so or .exe), or to multiple files of the same file type with one output file
for each source file (.dll, .so, .exe, .int, or .gnt). As well as an .lbr file, which contains a collection of .int and .gnt
files on Windows, you now can use a .dll as the container for application components.
Character-Mode Dialog System Support for creating character-based user interfaces for applications that run in character environments is available in
Visual COBOL.
Compiler directives When you upgrade your source code to Visual COBOL some Compiler directives that were specifically designed for 16-bit systems now produce an error on compilation because they
are no longer relevant. You should remove them from your code and directives files before you compile.
Linking The static run-time system and the single-threaded run-time system on Windows are no longer required and they are not shipped
with Visual COBOL. Applications built with Visual COBOL are now linked to the shared or dynamic run-time systems.
Called Programs and Dependencies At run time, called programs are found in the same way as before. However, there are some new ways to set COBPATH and copy
files into a common folder.
File Handler The File Handler .obj files are not available in Visual COBOL.Visual COBOL uses the File handler packaged in the mffh.dll file instead.
OpenESQL Assistant The OpenESQL Assistant data source names (DSNs) in Visual COBOL must be configured as ODBC or ADO.NET DSNs.
SQL Compiler Directive Options When you upgrade your to Visual COBOL, some SQL applications could require additional SQL Compiler directive options to avoid compiler errors.
XML PARSE Statement In Net Express, the default setting for the XMLPARSE Compiler directive is COMPAT, which causes the XML PARSE statement to return information
and events for IBM Enterprise COBOL Version 3. In Visual COBOL, the default is XMLPARSE(XMLSS), which returns information and events for IBM Enterprise COBOL Version 4.