Micro Focus Visual COBOL 5.0 for Visual Studio Release Notes Micro Focus The Lawn 22-30 Old Bath Road Newbury, Berkshire RG14 1QN UK http://www.microfocus.com © Copyright 2020 Micro Focus or one of its affiliates. MICRO FOCUS, the Micro Focus logo and Visual COBOL are trademarks or registered trademarks of Micro Focus or one of its affiliates. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. 2020-05-13 ii Contents Micro Focus Visual COBOL 5.0 for Visual Studio Release Notes ..................4 What's New ......................................................................................................... 5 .NET Core Support ............................................................................................................. 5 COBOL Formatting ............................................................................................................. 5 Code Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 5 Enterprise Server Common Web Administration ............................................................... 6 COBOL Language Enhancements ......................................................................................6 Compiler Directives ............................................................................................................. 7 Consolidated Trace Facility (CTF) ....................................................................................... 7 Data File Tools .................................................................................................................... 7 Database Access ................................................................................................................ 7 Database Connectors ......................................................................................................... 8 Debugging ...........................................................................................................................8 Enterprise Server Security ..................................................................................................8 Micro Focus Unit Testing Framework .................................................................................. 9 Platform Support ............................................................................................................... 10 Product Documentation .....................................................................................................10 Visual Studio Integration ................................................................................................... 10 Significant Changes in Behavior or Usage ....................................................12 Known Issues ................................................................................................... 15 Resolved Issues ............................................................................................... 16 Other Issues Resolved in This Release ........................................................ 38 Unsupported Functionality ..............................................................................40 Installation ........................................................................................................ 41 Before Installing ................................................................................................................ 41 Downloading the Product ....................................................................................... 41 On Windows ........................................................................................................... 41 Basic Installation ............................................................................................................... 44 Installing ................................................................................................................. 45 Advanced Installation Tasks ..............................................................................................45 On Windows ........................................................................................................... 45 After Installing ................................................................................................................... 47 On Windows ........................................................................................................... 47 Licensing Information ......................................................................................51 To activate Visual COBOL Personal Edition ......................................................................51 To request and activate a 30-day trial license for Visual COBOL ......................................52 To buy and activate a full unlimited license ....................................................................... 53 To start Micro Focus License Administration ....................................................................53 Installing licenses .............................................................................................................. 53 If you have a license file ......................................................................................... 53 If you have an authorization code ...........................................................................54 To obtain more licenses .................................................................................................... 54 Updates and SupportLine ................................................................................55 Further Information and Product Support ......................................................................... 55 Information We Need ........................................................................................................ 55 Creating Debug Files ........................................................................................................ 56 Copyright and Disclaimer ................................................................................57 Contents | 3 Micro Focus Visual COBOL 5.0 for Visual Studio Release Notes These release notes contain information that might not appear in the Help. Read them in their entirety before you install the product. Note: • This document contains a number of links to external Web sites. Micro Focus cannot be responsible for the contents of the Web site or for the contents of any site to which it might link. Web sites by their nature can change very rapidly and although we try to keep our links up-to-date, we cannot guarantee that they will always work as expected. • Check the Product Documentation section of the Micro Focus SupportLine Web site for any updates to the documentation which might have been uploaded. Product Overview Visual COBOL enables you to develop COBOL applications within Microsoft Visual Studio. You use the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) to edit, compile and debug COBOL applications. The IDE provides all the functionality to manage projects and build applications. The product is available in the following variants - Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2017 and Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2019. The execution environment for applications created with any of these product variants is COBOL Server. Upgrading from earlier Micro Focus products This version of your product is dependent on a later version of the Microsoft C run-time system than earlier Micro Focus products. This means that COBOL executables (.exe) built with a version earlier than 4.0 might not be compatible with the current version of the run-time products. If the behavior of your application changes with the current version, we strongly recommend that you relink the main executable with the current version. This will ensure that the COBOL run-time system fully handles any run-time error conditions that might occur. A new executable that is fully compatible with the current version can be produced without recompiling the application, as long as the original object code is available and it is relinked with the current version. To allow your executables to benefit from the product's latest programming and performance enhancements, we recommend a full recompilation of your source code. If you are using Visual Studio, you can configure the IDE to automatically check whether applications created with older releases must be relinked. If the application uses an older version of the C run-time system, Visual COBOL can automatically relink the existing executable or .dll to the new version of the C run-time system without the need to recompile the application first. If a project needs relinking, Visual Studio displays a message in the status bar providing an option for you to choose and relink the project. 4 | Micro Focus Visual COBOL 5.0 for Visual Studio Release Notes What's New This release provides enhancements in the following areas: • .NET Core Support • COBOL Formatting • Code Analysis • Enterprise Server Common Web Administration • COBOL Language Enhancements • Compiler Directives • Consolidated Trace Facility • Data File Tools • Database Access • Database Connectors • Debugging • Enterprise Server Security • Micro Focus Unit Testing Framework • Platform Support • Product Documentation • Visual Studio Integration .NET Core Support Back to Top .NET Core is an open-source development platform that supports multiple operating systems. You can now use Visual COBOL to develop a COBOL application then publish it to be deployed on .NET Core. The