Features Added in Visual COBOL 3.0

Integration with Visual Studio

This release provides enhancements in the following areas:

• Integration with Microsoft's Visual Studio 2017, the most recent version of world’s most popular integrated development environment (IDE) for the Windows platform, offering significant benefits for developers and businesses developing software for Windows.
• COBOL Editor:
  • Brace completion - a closing quote mark or bracket is automatically inserted when you type the opening quote mark or bracket at the end of a line.
  • Brace matching for IF and EVALUATE statements - clicking on any of the clauses of these statements highlights the opening and closing statements and all clauses. Use CTRL + ] to move the cursor to the next clause in the statement.
  • Collapse to definitions - closes all sections, entry points and methods in an open file. Use the Outlining > Collapse to Definitions editor context menu command.
  • Colorization is now available for QuickInfo, completion tooltips and signature help.
  • Completion of statements - IF and EVALUATE statements are now automatically aligned and completed.
  • Indentation - smart indentation is now available to control how lines indent within IF and PERFORM statements and after continuation statements.
  • Locate definition, , on the COBOL toolbar enables you to search for data items and identifiers by specifying any string of characters that might be part of their name. This command replaces Edit > Go To Location.
  • Outlining - outlining is now available for 01 level for group items (for expanding and collapsing the entire group)
  • Quick actions - Visual COBOL now supports Visual Studio's quick actions for rename refactoring, and finding or creating missing copybooks.
  • Tooltips are now available for managed COBOL members.
• COBOL toolbar - the commands on the COBOL toolbar have been updated in order to optimize your editing experience. A number of commands (renumber and unnumber) have been removed from the context menu in the editor and are now only available from the toolbar.
• Directives determination - there is now a preview dialog box when the IDE scans your sources for Compiler directives. This enables you to review and approve the directives before they are set.
• Error reporting - you can now sort the errors and warnings Error List window by their COBOL error code.
• Import, export and synchronization of the IDE options - you can now export a number of the COBOL global options as a Visual Studio .settings file. You can import the file into other instances of Visual COBOL.

  Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2015 and later now supports the automatic synchronization of a number of COBOL settings across the copies of Visual Studio installed on different machines. The settings are synchronized through your MSDN account. See the MSDN for more details and for information on any restrictions to the functionality.

• Project Details window - provides a number of enhancements, including performance improvement. It is now possible to filter on project or solution, perform a search, and sync with Solution Explorer. Tooltips are available in the Overrides column to show the override directives.
• Net Express import wizard - provides a new option for including copybooks in a project.
• Rename refactoring - this release introduces rename refactoring for COBOL code that can help to improve the readability of COBOL elements or make their purpose clearer. You can rename elements such as variables and identifiers, section and paragraph names, classes, and methods across a program or a solution.
• Support for standalone files - various improvements have been made to how you work with files that are not part of a project:
  • When you first open a standalone file, the editor displays an alert bar with options to browse for a symbols (.idy) file to use to compile the standalone file or to configure the Compiler directives.
  • You can now use the file's properties window to edit the Compiler directives and to specify options for debugging.
  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".

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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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Azure support

Visual COBOL now supports the following versions of Microsoft Azure SDK - version 2.9.6 with Visual Studio 2013 and version 3.0 with Visual Studio 2015 and later.

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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 - Tools > Options > Micro Focus > Projects. In Visual Studio, multi-processor compilation must also be enabled in the project's properties.

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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.

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 directives are new in this release:

• COLLECTION - provides a mechanism for code coverage to identify unexecuted programs.
• ILSTDLIB - helps you to ensure that your .NET COBOL code compiles with the correct version of the .NET Framework Microsoft Common Object assembly mscorlib.dll. When building from Visual Studio or using MSBuild to compile a COBOL project, the NOILSTDLIB directive is set, and an ILREF is generated pointing at the version of mscorlib appropriate for the target framework selected in the project's properties.

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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Documentation

The following new section 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.

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Enterprise Server

Improvements are available in the following areas:

Integration with Visual Studio:

• Exporting an enterprise server definition from the IDE in XML format.
• Importing an enterprise server into the IDE using its definition file.
• In Visual Studio, it is now possible to configure an enterprise server to produce a core dump file directly from the IDE, from the server properties.

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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Interface Mapping Toolkit

The Interface Mapping Toolkit (IMTK) contains the following enhancements in this release:

• Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) support for REST Web services, enabling Web service access from a CORS-supported Web browser.

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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 snippets for each element of a test case.
• Support for running tests with Code Coverage enabled.
• The Micro Focus Unit Testing window, 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:

• Generating NUnit-style reports.
• 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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