Rocket® COBOL

Hi everyone,With the release of Rocket Visual COBOL 11 and Rocket COBOL Analyzer 11, we’ve introduced GenAI Insights helping any developer easily understand and navigate COBOL applications of any size and complexity.Discover what’s possible with GenAI Insight under 90 seconds:If you have any questions let us know in the comments,Your Rocket COBOL team

Hi everyone!With the release of Rocket ACUCOBOL extend 11, you got the support for the most popular dev tool out here, Visual Studio Code.  Now you can equip your teams to develop ACUCOBOL applications in VS Code, simplifying hiring / onboarding and speeding up development.See the extension in action in the short demo:Let us know what Rocket ACUCOBOL demos you’d like to see in the future in the comments.  

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

Hello everyone,I just (6/4/26) download Visual COBOL for Eclipse Personal Edition Windows 11.0.zip   The C:\ProgramData\Micro Focus\CommuterLicFile.xml file is empty.License Administration cannot gener license.Anyone can help with generating trail license? How? Thanks.MA

We have a user that is on a Dell Laptop and two different times they have ran the Dell System Update process and Bench (ver 9.2) has started locking up on projects.  When this happens they get a “NOT RESPONDING” error from Windows and have to shut it down bench with task manager.  At times they can reboot the machine and it will work for a bit then start locking up again.  We have reinstalled bench on the machine but that did not fix the issue.  The only solution that worked was getting a new machine for that user but we don't want to do that again since this issue has now appeared on the new laptop also.Has anyone seen this happen after a system updates and if so how did you solve this issue? 

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. 

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 ?

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.

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. 

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

Our company is a very heavy user of AcuBench with thousands of projects. We also use VS Code for really test only code that still is in use in our system.  We are upgrading to Acu11 soon so I want to start playing with VS plug-in.  Is it as simple as just adding the plug-in to VS Code and opening a .pjt for a project?  Are there any required things to be installed on the machines that will be using it...for example does AcuBench have to be there or AcuGT? Thanks for any help as I get started on this journey to move from AcuBench to VS Code plug-in.

Hello I would like to compile cics pgms using personal edition but the cics copybooks are not there.  does rocket cobol personal edition allow me to compile cics pgms . i can see the db2 copy books but no cics.i can upload and recompile on z/os after i do my first test compile on vs cobol.thank you in advance for your assistance.

According to the documentation, if “FUNCTION ALL INTRINSIC” is specified in the Repository paragraph, the “FUNCTION” keyword is not required to refer to any intrinsic function.  Take the following program.       $set sourceformat"free"program-id. p.environment division.configuration section.repository.    function all intrinsic.data division.working-storage section.01  x               pic x(10).procedure division.    display function length(x)    display length(x)    goback.end program p.The first line of the procedure division (with function keyword) compiles fine.  The second like (no function keyword) gives the following error:    display length(x)*  13-S************                                                          ****    User-name requiredIs there a certain option required to activate this feature?Using Rocket (R) COBOL Version 11.0 (C).

Hi Folks,I have just finished reading my first book on Cobol Programming. I also finally got Visual Cobol installed in Visual Studio 2022 Community. I had to install and re-install Visual Cobol about a dozen times to get it installed properly.When I opened Visual Studio and went to Cobol it wanted me to install the license. I tried it a couple of times and it gave an error. Here is what happened:I clicked install license and it came up with an error. The error says unable to determine the status of the product license. ERROR DETAILS: Unable to obtain the requested license. Error 18: No license code is available for feature Solar Visual Studio 2010 on host1287.0.0.1.I think that this has been posted a few times, but when I don’t put such things in my posts, somebody always asks for it. I have zip file with a .xml, file thevcvs2022_110.exe, and the pdf file.Can somebody help me out with getting a license installed? I just finished reading my first book on Cobol. The title is COBOL Made E

Hello All,I have integrated my COBOL libraries to VS code and now I am trying to compile the COBOL program using the  link https://docs.rocketsoftware.com/bundle/enterprisedeveloper_dg_100_html/page/vcd1746630418216.htmlBut i am getting error in the compilation, what are the parameters i have to give to take my copybooks available in                      "COPYEXT(cbl,CPY,COPYCOB,COPYDCL)",                     "COPY\"G:\\MYLIB\\D000\\COPY\"",                     "COPY\"G:\\MYLIB\\D000\\COPYDCL\"",Please share your thoughts "windows": { "command": "cobol.exe", "args": [ { "value": "${file}", "quoting": "escape"}, { "value": "anim", "quoting": "strong"}, { "value": "nognt", "quoting": "strong"}, { "value": "errformat(3)", "quoting": "strong"}, { "value": ";", "quoting": "strong"} ] thanksSanoop

I am trying to make use of the ISO2002 option and ISO 2002 style program prototypes.  I’m running in to two, perhaps unrelated, issues.Even when I specify $set repository"update on checking on", no external repository file appears to be created. If I, in a separate calling program, code a program prototype for the called program, it appears to check for call parameter conformance correctly, but with a correctly coded call statement I end up with a fatal error, shown below.* Options: NOLIST NOASM* 912-S                                                                      ****    Internal error - Dictionary invalid r/w . Please contact Rocket Technical Support.I have three source files below:f1.cbl contains a function named f1. This compiles fine and writes the f1.rdf external repository file. p1.cbl contains a program named p1. p1, among other things, uses the f1 user defined function from above.  No function prototype is required because it is “read” from the external repository. Thi

Hello. I am old school mainframer trying to learn new things.I am trying to run visual cobol against db2 community version on windows 11.i am able to connect in the windowsform but i can not get a select statement without format errors.i did saw something about installing ibm.data.db2 but i do not know if that is a option.below is my code snippet.try    invoke conn::Open()    set label1::Text to "DB2 Connected"    move 'y' to db2-connected    set cmd to new System.Data.OleDb.OleDbCommand("SELECT LastName FROM Employee WHERE EmployeeID = 1", conn)    set reader to cmd::ExecuteReader()catch ex as type Exception    set label1::Text to "it did not connect"    end-trythe set cmd and set reader both have red underline errors.is there something i ned to install or is there another way to do this.The connect works so why not the select.Going nuts can’t figure it out!

Hi.In native COBOL I have an OO Dictionary that stores entries of the following group level item and this is incredibly fast and suits my purposes perfectly.I’ve converted this program to .NET COBOL and am really struggling to get this to perform anywhere close to native COBOL because of the overhead converting the PIC entries to a string when outputting to and retrieving from the dictionary.Do you have any suggestions that may help me to get the process to be performant?        01 def-fieldtouse.          03 def-any-output       pic x.              03 def-num-cols         pic x(2) comp-5.               03 def-next                 pic 9(18).          03 def-filename          pic x(100).          03 def-col-array.             05 def-columns occurs 800.               07 def-col-name   pic x(100).               07 def-col-type     pic x(15).  

I have an application written in MF Netexpress 5.1, within this application I'm trying to use Tree View thru Python I did use the following command:CALL "SYSTEM" USING "python fa_tree.py"it's working but it displays CMD black screen which is I don't want that, is there a solution for this issue please?

Hi,How can I download VISUAL COBOL  11.0 free trail  to install on my Windows 11?I just downloaded file  “Visual COBOL for Visual Studio Personal Edition 11.0.zip”, but this one does not have the install module.Thank you