Upgrading Your COBOL Applications

Note: Visual COBOL provides many options for modernizing your existing applications following the upgrade so we recommend you contact Micro Focus Professional Services for assistance with the modernization process.

Before you start upgrading your applications, Micro Focus recommends that you get familiar with Visual COBOL Development Hub - check New to Visual COBOL Development Hub in the Where do I start section of this product help.

Prerequisites

Keep your existing source code and build scripts on your UNIX machine and install Visual COBOL Development Hub on the same machine.

Process

The following is a typical approach to upgrading an application to Visual COBOL Development Hub:

Assess your existing processes for building and testing your applications that were created with Server Express.
Compile your existing sources at the command line and ensure that the application behaves as it did previously:
1. From a terminal window, set the environment for Visual COBOL Development Hub.
2. Build the existing application.
3. Resolve any compilation issues - see Compiling Your Applications.
Compile for debugging and for release and ensure that the application performs as expected.
If you have been using build scripts to compile the applications before, update these to use the new installation directory.
Update and relink any databases being used and any third-party tools as required.

Compile using your build scripts.

Once your applications compile as before, you can consider ways to modernize them such as to compile them to Java byte code. Procedural COBOL compiles to Java byte code without any changes which helps expose it to modern languages and technologies that interact with Java byte code.

Note: You can maximize the benefits of upgrading by using Visual COBOL Development Hub in conjunction with Visual COBOL for Eclipse installed on a local developer's machine. The Eclipse IDE helps improve the developers' productivity and efficiency by providing a number of advanced features such as a COBOL-aware editor (with Content Assist, a variety of productivity features), advanced compile, test and debug features and integration with major source control systems.