Rocket® COBOL

I have Visual COBOL + Microsoft Visual Studio on my Windows 11  laptop. I inadvertently deleted the shortcut that I used to launch Visual COBOL+VS. I cannot figure out how to restore the shortcut. Can anyone advise me on how to rebuild the correct shortcut? Thanks

I have a relational database with a one-to-many table. When reading it in COBOL, I believe it's necessary to read the record key from the main table and the related records from the secondary table; I believe a read should be performed from the main table record key, and the related records from the secondary table would be stored in an "occurs" of that record.The  code  FD :  FD ARCHIVO-NUEVO.01 REG-NUEVO-FISICO.05 Fis-RecNumber PIC 9(6).05 Fis-Nombre PIC X(30).05 Fis-Tabla-Pagos.10 Fis-Nuevo PIC 9(8) OCCURS 100 TIMES. Is correct???Thanks

Good afternoon, is there a way to make acu-gt print using the same font as acutoweb?It seems that the font and size settings in the configuration file are ignored by acu-gt. 

Hi everyone,If you’re interested in exploring a new GenAI capability that helps plan, generate, and analyze unit tests for COBOL, the AI Unit Testing for COBOL beta is a great opportunity to try it firsthand. Feel free to sign up or share this post with colleagues who may benefit. COBOL applications weren’t originally designed with unit testing in mind, which has made adoption notoriously challenging. In this beta program, you’ll gain hands-on experience with GenAI-driven unit testing and learn how to adopt it without making any changes to your production code. Learn more and register here: linkIf you have any questions, please reach out. I’d be happy to help. 

To show records of a vision file we use paged-grids and the majority of our users are fine with that.There is one customer (and unfortunately our most important one) who wants a “standard scrollbar”.The answer that this is only doable when we know how many records are 100% does not convince him and he does not let it go.So we thought of a lazy-loading scenario.We load and show the first 100 records and when he drags the grid thumb all the way down to the end of the grid we try to load more records.The problem is that the grid does not give an event when reaching the last record.Does anyone have an idea how to solve this ?Or do you have a totally different approach ?

My company currently uses Net Express 3.1 and will be migrating to Visual COBOL within the next several months.  We use the SPZERO compiler directive on majority of the programs we migrated off the mainframe several years ago.  This is due to having spaces in numeric fields on the old mainframe data files.  At the time of migration, it was better to use SPZERO than to modify the files/programs.  I read in the Visual COBOL documentation that SPZERO has been deprecated and is not supported in Visual COBOL.  Is there an alternate way to accomplish the same behavior as SPZERO in Visual COBOL? Thanks,Ben#VisualCOBOLautoscalemodescreenresolution#COBOL#netexpress

I’ve been using VC11 for Eclipse (Windows) for a couple of months now, and this seemly random highlighting of this is really getting on my nerves.  The image below shows a “simple” example.  It is often much worse.Here I just put my cursor on the top left and then cursored down some lines.  When my cursor reached line 14 the entire line, plus the first 3 characters of line 15, were suddenly highlighted for seemingly no reason.  Cursoring down again it removed highlight from 14 and highlights 15.  Other examples seem to be even more random.  Is this a known issue or what?  Anything I can do?  The only way to unhighlight is to open the Find box (Cntl-F) and then hit escape. 

I came upon the following and figured I’d give it a try:  https://docs.rocketsoftware.com/bundle/netexpress_ug_51wrappack1_html/page/opclap_15.htm#s016As long as the ACTUAL-PARAMS compiler option is specified immediately before the template class (my term), you can build out the full class with the specified name and based on the specified class parameter.  Specifically “$SET ACTUAL-PARAMS(ELinklist Employee)” will build the ELinklist class with Employee being the “parameter class”.  Specifically, the parameter class “Element” in the source for PLinkList will be replaced with actual class Employee.But what if I want a second one, say ALinklist with class Another as the parameter?  If I put “$SET ACTUAL-PARAMS(ALinklist Another)” below the earlier ACTUAL-PARAMS it will create ALinklist, but ELinklist seems to be gone.I can post my exact source code if necessary.

In Java you can define “static initializers”, which are run automatically when the class is initially loaded.  In Java it’s something like this.public class Test { static { // do initialization here. }} Can this be done in Visual COBOL?  I tried googling it, but google AI seems to be returning nonsense.

Hi everyone,We’re excited to welcome you to the first video in a new series COBOL in Action, launching in 2026. This series is all about short, highly technical sessions packed with hands-on product demos and practical insights.In this episode, we’re diving into the Rocket COBOL Visual Studio Code extension. We’ll walk through key capabilities such as source control integration and AI features that can enhance your development workflow.We want to make this sessions as valuable for you as possible so please share your questions and feedback in the comments. If there’s a specific topic you’d like us to cover in a future session, let us know. Your input will help shape what we tackle next.Thanks for joining us, and we hope you enjoy the video!

Hello everyone,after installing a recent Windows 11 update, my NE 5.1 license is no longer recognized. The software now behaves as if no valid license is installed. So far, I have already tried repairing the NE 5.1, but without success.  Any guidance or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.Thank you in advance.

Hi , we are working with Microfocus Visual COBOL for Eclipse on Linux/UNIX V8.0 and we do a lot of call SYSTEM in a lot of programs .We take the return-code of de call SYSTEM and we have detected that when we run in a SO LINUX if the execution is with newrun the return-code is 0 , but mis the execution is from a transational monitor writted in C the return-code is alwais 1 The same programs executed in AIX returns 0  

Hello!Is there a way to change the color of SQL queries in the editor that does not change the color of unused items? I’ve only discovered one item in Fonts and Colors, COBOL Unused Item, that changes the color of SQL, but I don’t want to change both.Thanks. 

Hello Team,Currently we have Enterprise developer already available in the system , I am trying to integrate VS Code using Rocket COBOL extension to do a BRD documentation using the Co-pilot features. We have two copybooks extension ,one with CPY and another COPYCOB. The intelisense is  able to identify the CPY copybooks but not the COPYCOB eventhough the extensions are mapped. Is there possibility to re-use the XML files of MFED for the integration of VS code.ThanksSanoop

Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2022 11.0.0 failing install on windows server 2022. Visual studio community edition is installed, version 18.4.3 and “Workload for C++ Desktop Applications “ is installed. Setup fail with error:81f40001 - Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 17.8 or later has not been detected anyone enconter this issue?

Hi All, hope all is well.Well, I never thought I would get back to COBOL, but during the watching of a video about AI and MS Access, my colleague briefly mentioned COBOL.   I thought cool, I will check COBOL out, since it has been a while since I developed with the language.  And I am glad I did!   Doing a Google Search on COBOL, I came across Rocket Software’s COBOL infographic.   Wow!  I was blown a way that COBOL was so widely used to this day.   Well, it has been decades since I programmed with COBOL.   My first job, was on a OS/390 Mainframe (nicknamed “Old Charlie”) during the Y2K effort.  Another job had me using MicroFocus COBOL for a Web Patient Application.Now today (decades later), I am getting back into COBOL and taking the first certification offered by Rocket Software..  I am almost done.   A few questions for some assistance.VS Code - How do you setup tasks to compile programs and related sub programs..  Yeah, I could do each one manually, but it would be more efficient

Hi there,my backup-drive crashed and the installation file nxp3251110031.msp is corrupt. Is there any way to get a replacement?Best regardsHeinz-Bernd Diers