Introduction to Developing COBOL Applications for .NET

.NET is an open-source development platform that supports multiple operating systems. As such, when you develop a COBOL application and publish it to .NET, you can deploy the published application to any operating system for which Micro Focus provides .NET support.

The general process for developing a COBOL application for .NET is as follows:

1. Use Visual Studio to create a new project, making sure that you use one targeted at .NET.
2. Build and debug the application as you would normally with Visual COBOL.
3. When the application is finished and ready to be released, publish the deployable files for the platforms that you want your application to run on.
   You can choose between two types of deployment:

   • a self-contained deployment (SCD), where the deployed files include the required .NET libraries and runtime files
   • a framework-dependent deployment (FDD), where the system onto which you deploy your application must include the required .NET libraries and runtime files
4. Deploy the published files.

   If you need to debug the deployed application you can use Visual COBOL's standard remote debugging techniques.

For more information on .NET, see Microsoft's .NET Documentation.