Features Added in Visual COBOL 3.0

Integration with Eclipse

This release provides enhancements in the following areas:

• Support for Eclipse 4.6 - Visual COBOL now ships with the 64-bit Eclipse 4.6. By default, Eclipse is configured to compile applications for 32-bit and the default target platform for new projects is 32-bit.
  Note: Applications that were created using Visual COBOL 2.3 Update 2 and earlier must be recompiled in Visual COBOL 3.0 to ensure they will compile and execute properly.

  The 32-bit Eclipse is still supported on 64-bit Windows platforms and you need to manually install the 32-bit IDE and a 32-bit Java

  You can install the Visual COBOL plugin in other instances of Eclipse (32-bit or 64-bit). Support for Eclipse 4.2 and 4.3 has been discontinued.

• Rename refactoring - enables you to rename COBOL elements such as variables and identifiers, section and paragraph names, classes, and methods across a program or a workspace. Renaming helps improve the readability of an item or make its purpose clearer. Two preferences for renaming are supported in Eclipse - directly in the editor or using a Rename dialog box that offers a preview.
• Copybook paths - it is now possible to specify copybook paths to folders that are outside the project folder.
• Standalone files:
  • It is now possible to specify the locations where the IDE will search for the program symbol files (.idy) for standalone files: Window > Preferences > Micro Focus > COBOL > Standalone Files > Program Symbols (.IDY).
  • It is now possible to use the Eclipse debug configurations to debug standalone files, including core dump files.

  In previous versions of Visual COBOL, standalone files were known as "single files". References to "single files" in the IDE and the product help have been changed to "standalone files".

• Error reporting - errors reported in the Console view now include a link for opening the source file at the line where the error originates.

• Editor improvements - an option for removing trailing whitespaces has been added to the IDE preferences for the COBOL editor.

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Application Server JCA support for Enterprise Server

In this release, EJBGEN has been updated to generate an EAR file as a part of the COBOL deployment process, which enables you to deploy EJBs to Java Application Server.

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Application Workflow Manager

Visual COBOL for Eclipse now provides the Application Workflow Manager (AWM) feature. AWM enables you to customize and extend the Eclipse UI and workbench functionality to create application workflows that meet your requirements.

The features comes with:

• A standard project model for local COBOL development that reflects the features available in COBOL Explorer. You can modify this model by adding or removing project features.
• Application Explorer, Filter Definitions, Properties, and Table Results views in the COBOL perspective.

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Application Workflow Manager

This release includes improvements in the following areas:

• Application Workflow Manager model editor:
  • The definition of linked element types and properties has been improved. Some required model objects and relationships are now generated automatically.
  • The editor now detects unused references in a model.
• Application Workflow Manager modeling:
  • Basic resource processing has been extended to support mass processing where appropriate.
  • The AWM function package now includes the following new tools:
    • "Return Property Value" - enables you to map the values of input parameters to output parameters.
    • "Validate Value" - enables you to validate a filename against a specified naming convention.
  • You can now specify enabling conditions in a more granular way. An additional condition type has been introduced to hide actions or properties. For example, hiding an action from the context menu of an element.
  • The Eclipse linked element type now enables the label and label decorator to be automatically set to mirror their representation in other Eclipse views if they are not explicitly modeled.
  • Table columns can be modeled as a combination of two or more properties - for example, to combine a date and time property value.
  • Additional standard icons.
• Mainframe Access (MFA) integration and the MVS function package:
  • MVS resources are now available as linked element types.
  • The following tools have been added to the MVS function package:
    • Delete MVS data set or member
    • Rename MVS data set or member
    • Copy MVS file to clipboard, Paste MVS file from clipboard
    • Get data set or member attributes
  • Improvements have been made to copy and paste support in the MVS Explorer.
  • File mapping between z/OS and local files now supports additional local code pages.
  • The editor context menu contains a "Submit to Mainframe" action when a file is opened from the MVS Explorer with an extension which is mapped to JCL in the File Mappings view.
  • Some of the new MVS function package tools replace existing ISPF function package tools resulting in improved performance of the tools.
  • The sample model "MVS Projects Sample Application" has been improved by including some of the new AWM MVS function package features.
• AWM is now available as a standalone feature which you can install into a separate instance of the Eclipse IDE installed on your machine.

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Building applications

This release provides the following improvements:

• Support for faster, parallel building on multi-CPU machines - support has been added for multi-processor compilation of the sources in native COBOL projects on multi-CPU machines.

  You can specify the maximum number of concurrent compilations from the IDE preferences - Window > Preferences > Micro Focus > Builder.

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Character Encoding

A new utility, cobutf8, is available. cobutf8 enables you to seamlessly run applications that require non-UTF-8 character encodings in a UNIX environment that is using a UTF-8 locale.

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COBOL language enhancements

This release includes the following enhancements to the COBOL syntax:

• The DISPLAY-OF and NATIONAL-OF intrinsic functions are now able to process conversions using any IBM CCSID value. See To install a CCSID Table for details on installing the required CCSID table.

The following enhancements are available in managed COBOL:

• To avoid an exception being thrown if an explicit conversion fails, use the AS IF syntax, which results in the target object being set to null and no exception thrown. See cast expressions in the Expressions topic for more information.

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Code analysis

This release provides the following improvements:

• A new group of predefined rule sets for 64-bit readiness is now included in Visual COBOL.
• Support for importing code analysis reports produced with one of Micro Focus's advanced tools for code analysis, Enterprise Analyzer or COBOL Analyzer.

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Code coverage

The following improvements are available within the IDE:

• Information about unexecuted programs - the code coverage reports in the Code Coverage window now show the unexecuted programs.
• Code coverage support for standalone COBOL files - you can import existing code coverage reports in the Code Coverage window and use it to supply code coverage information for standalone files.
• Remote code coverage files - in the Code Coverage window in Eclipse, it is now possible to import code coverage report files that are stored in remote locations.
• Test coverage files - it is now possible to use a test coverage file to debug applications.

If you are using Test Coverage from the command line, you can now use the following features:

• A new Compiler directive, COLLECTION - the directive enables test coverage to gather information about unexecuted programs. In the IDE, this directive is automatically set on a project when you enable code coverage for it.
• A new command line utility, tcutil - the utility enables you to convert the test coverage binary results file into XML format.
• It is now possible to integrate test coverage in a Continuous Integration (CI) system. You can use tcutil and an XSLT processor to transform test coverage data into a format suitable for including in a CI.

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Compiler control

The following Compiler directive are new in this release:

• COLLECTION - provides a mechanism for code coverage to identify unexecuted programs.

The following Compiler directives have been updated:

• ALIGN - this directive has new parameters (FIXED and OPT) that can be used in conjunction with the integer taken, which can aid performance. The default is ALIGN"8 OPT"; see the Comments section of the ALIGN Compiler directive topic for details of its affect on memory boundaries.
• ARITH - this directive emulates the IBM mainframe option of the same name. Defines the maximum number of digits for numeric data items.
• FASTINIT - this directive is now on by default when setting the MF dialect; it remains not set by default for other dialects.
• SSRANGE - this directive now has an additional option (3), which permits zero-length reference modified items at run time when bounds checking.
• XMLPARSE - includes a change in the way entities are processed when XMLPARSE(COMPAT) is set

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Data File Tools

This release provides the following enhancements to Data File Tools:

• Opening files in shared mode - it is now possible to switch between read-only shared and edit modes. While a file is open in shared mode, others users can only open it in shared mode to ensure data consistency between users.
• Enterprise Server-level of security when accessing files - there is an improved level of security when exchanging data between Data File Tools and the targeted enterprise server instance. Users must now provide a user ID, group and a password when they try to access and view datasets in enterprise server instances. These are used for authentication and authorization checks to provide the same access level as Enterprise Server.
• Opening datasets using SSL - communication to a region is now possible using SSL. To enable the SSL communication, you need to provide a Java trust store which contains either a CA root certificate or a self-signed certificate of the region that it is communicating to. Java and the targeted region SSL configurations need to meet each other's standards in order for the communication to succeed.

  This feature enables you to secure the information exchange between Data File Tools and the targeted enterprise server.

• Auditing of access and updates on datasets - Audit Manager now audits the access and updates on datasets via Data File Tools.
• Support for existing .pro files - enables you to use your existing editor profiles.
• Support for existing .str files - enables you to use your existing COBOL structure files.
• Automatic timeout - if no internal operations or external actions (such as a mouse click) have been detected for 30 minutes, Data File Tools now displays a countdown message. If the user does not take any decision within the specified period, Data File Tools closes all opened files.

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Database access - DB2

This release provides a new DB2(QUALIFY-CALL) Compiler directive that enables stored procedure invocations to include a schema name.

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Database access - MySQL

This release provides support for MySQL with ODBC.

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Database access - OpenESQL

This release provides the following new features:

• Statement prefixes for the SQL(CHECK) Compiler directive that enable the creation of temporary tables and other SQL objects at compile time, ensuring full SQL syntax checking during compilation.
• SQL(OPTIMIZECURSORS) Compiler directive that enhances processing for traditional embedded SQL cursors that use WITH HOLD and FOR UPDATE clauses.
• SQL(CLOSE_ON_COMMIT) Compiler directive to leave cursors open for further result set processing after a commit.
• SQL(GEN-SQLCA) Compiler directive that generates an SQLCA similar to the z/OS DB2 directive STDSQL(YES).

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Debugging applications

This release provides the following new features:

• Debugging core dump files without a project.
• Reverse debugging (Technology Preview) - it is now possible to step backwards through an application to view a recording of the previous steps executed in the current debug session. Input is not accepted while viewing recorded execution.
  Restriction: Reverse Debug and Live Recording functionality is licensed and installed separately from undo.io. You can enable reverse debug functionality by downloading the extension from the Micro Focus Marketplace.

  This functionality is only supported on the following platforms:

  • Red Hat Linux (x86 and x64)
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 12 SP2 (x64 only)
  • CentOS 8.2 (x64 only)
  • Ubuntu Linux 20.04.x (LTS) (x64 only)

  Additional restrictions apply. For details, see the Reverse Debug and Live Recording topic in the Known Issues and Restrictions section of this documentation.

• COBOL Live Recording debug configuration (Technology Preview) - it is now possible to record an application execution and view its execution path in the debugger. This method of debugging enables stepping both forwards and backwards, but does not accept input.
  Restriction: Reverse Debug and Live Recording functionality is licensed and installed separately from undo.io. You can enable reverse debug functionality by downloading the extension from the Micro Focus Marketplace.

  This functionality is only supported on the following platforms:

  • Red Hat Linux (x86 and x64)
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 12 SP2 (x64 only)
  • CentOS 8.2 (x64 only)
  • Ubuntu Linux 20.04.x (LTS) (x64 only)

  Additional restrictions apply. For details, see the Reverse Debug and Live Recording topic in the Known Issues and Restrictions section of this documentation.

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Deployment on multiple platforms

This release provides support for deploying JVM COBOL applications on multiple platforms. You can compile an application on one platform (such as Windows) and then deploy its class files to a different platform (such as Linux or UNIX).

Some features of the COBOL language, however, are platform-specific and their behavior on different platforms might vary. See Multi-Platform Deployment of JVM COBOL Applications for details.

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Documentation

The following new sections have been added to the product help:

• Where do I start? - located on the launch page of the product help, this section provides the information you need in order to get started depending on which aspects of the product you need to get to grips with first.
• Multi-Platform Deployment of JVM COBOL Applications - includes information about how to ensure the portability of your JVM COBOL applications between Windows and UNIX or Linux platforms.

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Enterprise Server

Improvements are available in the following areas:

Integration with Eclipse:

• Exporting an enterprise server definition from the IDE in XML format.
• Importing an enterprise server into the IDE using its definition file.

Long user IDs and passwords:

• Enterprise Server now supports user IDs and passwords of up to 100 characters. It is possible to map IDs from long to short (or vice versa) to enable compatibility with programs that do not support long names.

SHA-256 support in DemoCA:

• By default, the Demonstration Certificate Authority (CA) now signs certificates with SHA-256. This ensures that the demonstration or evaluation certificates will be accepted by modern browsers and other software that has enhanced security requirements.

Syslog auditing:

• Enterprise Server now supports auditing using syslog events, which can be consumed by a wide range of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) products. This replaces the Audit Manager auditing solution. Syslog auditing provides a much more efficient auditing mechanism, with significantly less impact on overall speed.

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The Micro Focus Unit Testing Framework

The Micro Focus Unit Testing Framework is now available from within the IDE. It includes much of the architecture you would expect of an xUnit framework to create, compile, run and debug unit tests, including the following features:

• A unit test project template.
• A test creation wizard that enables you to generate tests from your source code.
• Code templates for each element of a test case.
• Support for running tests with Code Coverage enabled.
• The Micro Focus Unit Testing view, where you can manage your test runs and view test output.

There has been a number of enhancements to the command line version of the Micro Focus Unit Testing Framework. Support has been added for:

• Running test fixture files using Apache Ant.
• Applying traits to your test cases, then performing a test run based on those traits.
• Applying a high, medium, or low priority to test cases, which affects the order in which they are run.
• Adding coded command line options directly into your test code.
• Using a test run-specific configuration file, in which you can set environment variables.

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XML processing

XML PARSE now works in a purely managed COBOL environment. It is now supported in JVM COBOL and, in both .NET and JVM COBOL, it has a fully managed implementation. XML PARSE working without calling out to native code ensures it can be used in restricted rights environments.

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