Cumulative Changes from Net Express to Micro Focus Visual COBOL for Eclipse Micro Focus The Lawn 22-30 Old Bath Road Newbury, Berkshire RG14 1QN UK http://www.microfocus.com Copyright © Micro Focus 2018. All rights reserved. MICRO FOCUS, the Micro Focus logo and Visual COBOL are trademarks or registered trademarks of Micro Focus IP Development Limited or its subsidiaries or affiliated companies in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. 2018-06-07 ii Contents Cumulative Changes from Net Express to Visual COBOL for Eclipse ..........4 About this Guide ..................................................................................................................4 What was New .................................................................................................................... 4 What was New in Visual COBOL 4.0 ....................................................................... 4 What was New in Visual COBOL 3.0 ..................................................................... 10 What was New in Visual COBOL 2.3 Update 2 ......................................................17 What was New in Visual COBOL 2.3 Update 1 ......................................................18 What was New in Visual COBOL 2.3 ..................................................................... 21 What was New in Visual COBOL 2.2 Update 2 ......................................................29 What was New in Visual COBOL 2.2 Update 1 ......................................................31 What was New in Visual COBOL 2.2 ..................................................................... 36 What was New in Visual COBOL 2.1 Update 1 ......................................................41 What was New in Visual COBOL 2.1 ..................................................................... 42 What was New in Visual COBOL 2.0 ..................................................................... 44 What was New in Visual COBOL 2010 .................................................................. 51 Significant Changes .......................................................................................................... 55 Significant Changes in Visual COBOL 4.0 ............................................................. 55 Significant Changes in Visual COBOL 3.0 ............................................................. 60 Significant Changes in Visual COBOL 2.3 Update 2 ..............................................62 Significant Changes in Visual COBOL 2.3 Update 1 ..............................................63 Significant Changes in Visual COBOL 2.3 ............................................................. 65 Significant Changes in Visual COBOL 2.2 Update 2 ..............................................68 Significant Changes in Visual COBOL 2.2 Update 1 ..............................................68 Significant changes in Visual COBOL 2.2 .............................................................. 69 Significant Changes in Visual COBOL 2.1 Update 1 ..............................................71 Significant Changes in Visual COBOL 2.1 ............................................................. 71 Significant Changes in Visual COBOL 2.0 ............................................................. 72 Unsupported or Deprecated Functionality ........................................................................ 73 Unsupported or Deprecated at Visual COBOL 4.0 ................................................ 73 Unsupported or Deprecated at Visual COBOL 3.0 ................................................ 73 Unsupported or Deprecated at Visual COBOL 2.3 Update 2 .................................74 Unsupported or Deprecated at Visual COBOL 2.3 Update 1 .................................74 Unsupported or Deprecated at Visual COBOL 2010 ............................................. 74 Upgrading from Net Express to Visual COBOL ................................................................ 74 An introduction to the process of upgrading your COBOL applications ................. 74 Compile at the Command Line Using Existing Build Scripts ..................................76 Debugging Without a Project ..................................................................................77 Create a project and import source ........................................................................77 Using Visual COBOL for Visual Studio ...................................................................79 Change the Defaults to Replicate Your Existing Project Structure ......................... 81 Best Practice in Visual COBOL Development ........................................................ 82 Modernize Your Applications and Processes ......................................................... 83 Procedural COBOL Compared with Managed COBOL .................................................... 84 Contents | 3 Cumulative Changes from Net Express to Visual COBOL for Eclipse Welcome to Visual COBOL for Eclipse. This document combines information on Visual COBOL for Eclipse releases from the first release, Visual COBOL 2010 R1, to the most recent release. This information is taken from the various releases' Release Notes and other sources, and brought together here for your convenience. You can use this document: • If your Visual COBOL installation is up to date, to see the changes made in the latest release. • If you already use Visual COBOL but your installation is not entirely up to date, to see the changes made over several updates, together in one place. • If you are migrating from Net Express, to see everything that has changed in the life of Visual COBOL for Eclipse. About this Guide We recommend that you read all the sections of this publication, looking for information on the release that is most relevant to your needs. The main sections are as follows: What was New This section describes new functionality that was introduced in each successive release. Significant Changes This section describes, for each successive release, the changes in behavior or usage that could affect the behavior of existing applications or impact the way the tools are used. Unsupported or Deprecated This section describes any functionality that was discontinued or Functionality deprecated at a given release. Known Errors and This section describes known errors affecting the latest release, and Restrictions restrictions in its use. Upgrading from Net Express This section gives guidance on upgrading from earlier Micro Focus to Visual COBOL products. Within each section, we recommend reading in the reverse chronological order in which it is presented here - that is, reading about the most recent release first, and then going back through the development of the products. That way, you can more easily see if anything was added in an earlier release and subsequently removed. What was New This section describes the new features that were introduced in each successive release of Visual COBOL. What was New in Visual COBOL 4.0 This release provides enhancements in the following areas: • Integration with Eclipse • Application Server JCA Support for Enterprise Server 4 | Cumulative Changes from Net Express to Visual COBOL for Eclipse • Application Workflow Manager • Build Tools for Windows • Code Coverage • Codeset support • Compiler directives • Data File Tools • Debugging • Docker • Documentation on working with large applications • Enterprise Server • File Handler • Managed COBOL • Library routines • Micro Focus Unit Test Framework • OpenESQL • Platform support Integration with Eclipse Back to Top This release provides the following general enhancements: • Support for Eclipse 4.7 Oxygen (64-bit) and 64-bit project templates - the 64-bit Eclipse 4.7 is now installed by default. Project templates are available for both 32-bit and 64-bit applications. You can set a default project template (either 32-bit or 64-bit) to use so that all future new projects will use that as the preference. On platforms only capable of building to 64-bit, the 64-bit templates are the default ones. The 32-bit Eclipse is still supported on 64-bit Windows platforms, however you need to manually install it and a 32-bit Java. Support for Eclipse 4.4 and 4.5 has been discontinued. • Support for SUSE 12 - only the 64-bit SUSE 12 platform is supported and you can only use the 64-bit Eclipse with 64-bit projects on it. • (Native COBOL projects only) The Project Settings page in the project's properties now include a search option. This enables you to find files and build configurations that have settings different from the ones set at project level. • Remove File Directives - a context menu command in the explorer view enables you to reset a file's directives. • IVP diagnostic tool enhancements - it is now possible to run the server-side IVP diagnostic tool for diagnosing issues with a remote connection from within Eclipse installed at the client side. The IVP tool now also performs a check for whether XTERM is installed on the remote machine. • IMTK service mappings are now automatically regenerated if you make a change to the interface fields in the underlying program. The following enhancements are available for JVM COBOL projects and package handling: • New wizards for creating ENUM, DELEGATE and VALUETYPE types. • Additional code snippets for Method-Id and Property-Id. • Showing and grouping packages in the COBOL Explorer view - use the COBOL JVM Project Presentation command from the