Rocket® COBOL

Created On:  04 December 2012 Problem: Is it possible through AcuCobol to change the fonts or enlarge the pop-up menu? Resolution: This is not possible from COBOL. You would need to choose the size of menus by using the Windows Control Panel. And there is only minimal control there. Old KB# 36660#COBOL

Created On:  12 December 2012 Problem: It is possible to have multiple physical files that are, logically, the same file? In this scenario, it is useful to be able to combine the records from the different physical files into one Relativity table. Resolution: *The Relativity Designer Help file discusses this topic in detail. However, the following is a simple guide to setting it up. This guide assumes that you have created a new catalog and have imported the FDs of all the files you wish to use. **All files MUST have the same structure and data definition. If you wish to 'merge' data from files that have dissimilar structures, then create a table per file and merge the data in your ODBC enabled application using SQL JOIN. 1. Open each FD, right click, and select Add File Label. Ensure the name is unique for each FD. It helps to give the File Label the same name as the FD. 2. Create a table and drag all the fields (including the File Label field) from the first FD. 3. Clic

Created On:  28 November 2012 Problem: Customer developed a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application in Visual COBOL.When they now run the application under the debugger, when it executes the InitializeComponent method for a particular window it takes about 30 seconds before it returns back to the debugger.What is causing this extreme slow down? Resolution: After examination of the .xaml code for the form it was found to contain a button that used an image file that was referenced using a UNC name.The UNC name that was referenced was not a valid location on the customers computer and so that when the form was being loaded it could not find the location and the network search for the image file was causing the slow down.When the customer changed the UNC to reference an existing location the performance returned to normal. Old KB# 36642#VisualCOBOL#Enterprise#COBOL#EnterpriseDeveloper

Created On:  27 November 2012 Problem: There are Stored Procedures that are causing the MicroFocus.COBOL.FileHandler warning that is preventing the ability to publish to the SQL Server 2012 database. Resolution: Use NOOUTDD directive Incident #2602526 Old KB# 36638#COBOL

Created On:  27 November 2012 Problem: If you have enabled a trace in Fileshare what will you see in the trace if an application has issued a rollback of a transaction? Resolution: The Fileshare trace will log the file operations that are performed on a file. The file handler op code for a rollback is DD and it is a standard file operation you the full code you see is FA DD.An example log showing a rollback would look like:-07385680 FS163-I Input- FSADMIN FA8E C:\\MYFILES\\AFILE.DAT07385680 FS173-I Output- FSADMIN 2/307385680 FS163-I Input- FSADMIN FAF3 C:\\MYFILES\\AFILE.DAT07385682 FS173-I Output- FSADMIN 0/007391544 FS163-I Input- FSADMIN FADD07391546 FS173-I Output- FSADMIN 0/007391719 FS171-I Input- Logoff FSADMIN07391723 FS173-I Output- 00001 0/0You can see in the trace above that the FADD (Rollback) has been issued. Incident #2600954 Old KB# 36636#COBOL

Created On:  14 December 2012 Problem: What is the safe maximum number of parameters that can be passed to a COM object from an unmanaged COBOL program? Resolution: Any application that call a COM componment needs to be built with the OOCTRL( P) compiler directive. This directive limits the number of parameters passed on an invoke to 31.If an application passed more than 31 then an RTS114 or RTS252 runtime error may result.To work round this limitation you can design the COM method so that is accepts another COM object as a parameter. The parameters can be set as properties on this object that is passed. Alternatively properties could be exposed on the COM object and set before the invoke is made to the method. Incident #2597978 Old KB# 36679#COBOL

Created On:  16 November 2012 Problem: With Visual COBOL for Visual Studio there is a sample solution called RMMFMigration.  This solution assists in the conversion of RM/COBOL data files to the Micro Focus Visual COBOL data file format.   Converting RM/COBOL data files to Micro Focus Visual COBOL Format is a two step process.  The data file is first converted to an intermediate variable length sequential file by a conversion routine (ixconvert.cob) and is then passed to a Visual COBOL application (rebuild.exe) to convert the intermediate file into a Micro Focus Visual COBOL index file. However this isn't an Eclipse version of this solution. Resolution: The RMMFMigration project is really just a front end that then calls ixconvert that does the real work. Ixconvert is an RM/COBOL object and can be run using ‘runcobol’. It will produce a Micro Focus binary sequential file and will return several pieces of information to the caller including the key expres

Created On:  04 December 2012 Problem: Customer has developed a .NET Windows Forms application using Visual COBOL and now they wish to deploy it on a network server so that all workstations that are mapped to the server can run the application without installing the COBOL Server product locally on each workstation.Can this be done? Resolution: Yes, a .NET managed code application can be setup to run from a network server as long as the workstations that are accessing the server have the required permissions.If you also are using native code components in your application then you will need to setup the licensing as shown in KB article here:Here are the instructions for extracting the managed code assemblies from the COBOLServer21.exe installer so that they can be deployed on a network and shared by workstations. The following are instructions for installing the COBOL Server 2.1 managed code assemblies to use on a network. This assumes that you already have the COBOL Server

Created On:  30 April 2012 Problem: Failed to authorize the Authorization Code over the web.  Even when using the Manual Authorization option, it says the license is installed but nothing was displayed on the 'Licenses' tab of the 'Micro Focus Licensing System Administration' window. Resolution: The license files, lservrc.stn and lservrc.net, are located in:C:\\ProgramData\\Micro Focus - for Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7 C:\\Documents and Settings\\All Users\\Application Data\\Micro Focus - for Windows XP Follow these instructions:1.   Create a copy of the lservrc.net and lservrc.stn files.2.   If you see the word "STANDALONE" in the license strings, then open the lservrc.stn file using       notepad or wordpad.              If you see the word "NETWORK" in the license strings, then open the lservrc.net file.3.   If the license fil

Created On:  23 November 2012 Problem: How do you get the DB2 JDBC JNDI database connection with Visual COBOL for Eclipse? Resolution: 1. Introduction This document covers working with OpenESQL applications under the Visual COBOL eclipse product lines, including some background on how things fit together, and an example of building and executing a sample program. 2. Software requirements The document assumes that you already Have a copy of Visual COBOL for Eclipse installed and licensed appropriately. Have a copy of DB2 installed like db2 10.1 express version. Have a copy of simple JNDI class library .jar file like simple-jndi-0.11.4.1.jar 3. DB2 COBOL example    In Eclipse    Create JVM project    create cobol program TestDate    Cut and paste the below program into the new program.         $set sql(dbman=jdbc)        program-id. TestDate as "TestDate". &nb

Created On:  12 December 2012 Problem: Having Internet Explorer 8 installed, the Web Browser control returns a value related to IE 7. This may cause some issue to customer's application which will run a test on the browser installed on end-users' machines. Resolution: This problem is caused by some changes that MS introduced during the IE 8 Beta1. The following link explains the problem and the solution. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2009/03/10/more-ie8-extensibility-improvements.aspx In short, you need to add a registry key naming the executable (wrun32.exe or acuthin.exe, or if you have renamed the runtime, whatever name you gave it). Incident #2599414 Old KB# 36675

Created On:  20 November 2012 Problem: Using the compiler directive XMLGEN(WS) instructs the compiler to create the XML model files.   However the IDE creates the XML model file(s) in the project root directory, but the runtime is expecting to find them in the output folder so an error 39  is generated, for example:Error: 39[01] model (symbol table) file that defines model data-name not found[39]ModdelFileDataName parameter: "Address-Struct" Resolution: The XMLGEN directive can specify a path for the directory/folder of where to put the model template file.  This path can be relative or absolute.  If the ws option is desired, specify it in a separate XMLGEN(ws) directive that follows the XMLGEN(path) directive, where path indicates your desired directory/folder, because setting the path nullifies the XMLGEN(ws) option.  For example,      cobol testxmlgen01 XMLGEN(c:\\windows\\temp) XMLGEN(ws);  will

Created On:  04 December 2012 Problem: Customer is converting a native code Net Express application that uses Oracle's Pro*COBOL precompiler to access Oracle databases, to use Visual COBOL .NET managed code using the Oracle Data Provider ODP.NET driver.OpenESQL supports dates that are in ISO format YYYY-MM-DD but the application is using the Oracle format of MM-DD-YYYY.How can they continue to use the Oracle formats so that they do not have to change their source code? Resolution: Starting with Visual COBOL 2.1 Hotfix 2, there is a new SQL directive called DATE=EXTERNAL.When this directive is set and the program is using the Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET) then the date format used will be that set by the NLS_DATE_FORMAT and NLS_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT settings of Oracle or the NLS_DATE_FORMAT and NLS_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT environment variables if they are set.This only works with the ODP.NET and does not work with the Microsoft Oracle ADO driver.Here is an example program

Created On:  11 December 2012 Problem: Customer has a .NET Windows Form application written in Visual COBOL.  The form has several textbox controls on it and it uses auto validation by setting their CausesValidation property to true.This works fine when a user leaves the field except when they click on a button that causes a FormClose event to fire, such as invoke self::Close or clicking on the Windows Close "X" box.The problem is that the Validating event occurs before the FormClosing event so the validation code will be executed when it really should be bypassed so that error messages are not displayed etc.How can this be programmed so that the validation code is bypassed if the form is closed? Resolution: There is a sample program attached that demonstrates how this can be done by checking the current stack for the form to see if the WmClose message is present before executing the validation logic.If WmClose is found then the logic will be bypassed and the

Created On:  12 December 2012 Problem: When a .Net control is local on the same computer where the Runtime is executing there is no error.  But when the .Net control is on another computer and accessed remotely via either UNC notation or a mapped drive the version 9.1.1 Runtime crashes with a memory access violation.  With 8.1.x runtime there is no crash - everything works as expected. Resolution: Version 9.1.1 implemented the .Net 4.0 framework, which has different security than previous versions of the .net framework. In particular, it won't default load an assembly on a remote machine (and in some cases, won't even load one that came from a remote machine, but is now local). Previous .Net versions did not have such a security restriction which is why earlier Runtime versions do not have a problem. To allow loading of remote assemblies requires the creation of a .Net configuration filenamed wrun32.exe.config in the same directory as wrun32.exe,

Created On:  30 November 2012 Problem: In the Net Express/Server Express documentation in the section under COBOL/Java Interoperability section for compatible data types here: it shows that the compatible COBOL data type for the Pointer class is PIC X(99).Does this mean that the maximum size of a string that can be passed to COBOL is 99 bytes? Resolution: The documentation example is not correct.PIC X(99) is shown as an example of what the data type could look like and not what it must look like.The documentation should really show the data type for the Pointer class as:       PIC X(n) where n = 1 -> maximum length of string passed. Old KB# 36645#ServerExpress#netexpress#EnterpriseDeveloper#VisualCOBOL#COBOL#StudioEnterpriseEdition#Enterprise

Created On:  16 November 2012 Problem: Customer is using a C# Windows Forms project in his application and they need to be able to call some native COBOL .dlls from C#.What is the easiest method to do this in Visual COBOL? Resolution: The easiest method is probably to create a wrapper program using managed COBOL that C# can call directly.The managed COBOL wrapper program would then format the parameters passed to it according to what is expected by the native COBOL program.There is a demo program attached to this article that shows one method that this can be done.Here is the description from the demo:                       TestWrapper Demo  This example program demonstrates how C# can call a native COBOL program by using a managed COBOL wrapper program. The managed COBOL wrapper program is compiled with the ilsmartlinkage directive which causes the c

Created On:  16 November 2012 Problem: Do I need an authorisation code when installing Visual COBOl Development Hub Product? Resolution: No, when installing the Visual COBOL Development Hub product it will install a 30 day Evaluation license automatically, then you have 30 days to aquire a Full License and install this via the APPTRACK utility. NA Old KB# 36612#COBOL

Created On:  12 December 2012   Problem:   It may be necessary to gather use count information for your RM/COBOL Runtime or Compiler. However, this information is not reported by the Runtime or Compiler products.   Resolution:   The RM/COBOL Use Count Utility(rmucutil) is used to check how many use count licenses are in use on the network.  The RM/COBOL Use Count Utility(rmucutil) can be found in the RM/COBOL installation directory. Below is the usage information for the RM/COBOL Use Count Utility(rmucutil): rmucutil RegistrationNumber [COMPILER|RUNTIME] DETAILS *The Registration Number for your product can be found by running either of the following commands: "runcobol" or "rmcobol" In addition, the environment variable RM_UC_LOG_PATH can be set to a directory, so RM/COBOL will create a RMUSECNT.LOG file, which will contain similar diagnostic messages. For example, for Windows systems, setting RM_UC_LOG_PATH=C:\\TMP will cause RM/COBOL to create a

Created On:  03 December 2012 Problem: When building a Visual COBOL project the following error is produced: LINK : fatal error LNK1248: image size (D3B7A000) exceeds maximum allowable size (80000000) Resolution: This is a limit of Windows not the compiler.   The Microsoft linker has determined that the size of the output file will exceed the largest possible size for a program image.   The largest possible size for a program image is 2 GB.The solution is to reduce the size of the program image,  for example this large array would cause the error, reducing the size of the occurs would resolve the problem. 01  library            identified by "library".          05  book             identified by "book"             &nb

Created On:  16 November 2012 Problem: Customer creates a line sequential file that has different record lengths in it depending on the user running the application. They would like to use a single file description in their COBOL application to create these files so that they do not need a different description for each file.The file name will be created dynamically and the records are different lengths. Also the records need to be padded out to the desired record length using spaces. How can this be done? Resolution: An example is attached to this article.Here is what the program looks like:      *----------------------------------------------------------------*      *                      TESTVARYING                   &nb

Created On:  29th November 2012 Problem: In Visual COBOL for Eclipse, when compiling a remote project which includes DB2 directives it fails with an error:    [cobol]     [cobol] Compiling (64-bit) Program1.cob...    [cobol]     [cobol] Load error : file 'cobsqlecm64.so'    [cobol] error code: 198, pc=0, call=1, seg=0    [cobol] 198     Load failure (No such file or directory)    [cobol]     [cobol] cob64: error(s) in compilation: Resolution: Before starting the RSE server process via the script $COBDIR/remotedev/startrdodaemon the environment must be correctly configured so that the DB2 libraries can be found.  The environment can be configured using the db2profile script provided with DB2 in the sqllib directory located in the home directory of the DB2 instance user.  For example, you could create a script to

Created On:  30 November 2012 Problem: Customer would like to set a breakpoint when animating in Server Express, so that the program breaks whenever the value of a particular data item changes.  Is this possible? Resolution: For the Animator in Server Express, you cannot set a global break condition (i.e. unassociated with a particular statement in the Procedure Division), where execution would stop whenever the value of a data-item changes. This was a feature of earlier releases of MF COBOL, such as Workbench and Object COBOL Developer's Suite, but it's not in Server Express. Instead, you will have to set a breakpoint on a particular statement, using the If option in the Breakbpoint menu. Execution will break on that statement if/when: That statement is reached, and the condition is met. Old KB# 36647

Created On:  19 November 2012 Problem: When installing Visual Cobol 2.1 Products it will install the License manager using lmsetup64.msi , this will automatically create Firewall rules to allow for communication to licening servers. Is there a parameter to prevent firewall rules from being set during license manager installation? Resolution: You can use the following parameter when installing the license manager: > lmsetupx64.msi ENABLEFIREWALL.B770BEF9_6C75_468D_A6D3_B6B7856579C8=”FALSE”This will not create any Firewall rules when installing the license manager. NA Old KB# 36619#COBOL

Created On:  21 November 2012 Problem: Opening an HTML file in Net Express fails with the following error after applying Net Express 5.1 WrapPack 7: Object Code error: file 'proplist'error code: 153, pc=0, call=1, seg=0153   Subscript out of range (in .\\PROPLIST.cbl, line 2366)The exact same error appears when creating ActiveX controls in a Dialog System screenset. Resolution: The problem has been addressed in RPI 1085782, and the fix will be included in Net Express 5.1 WrapPack 8, which will be released sometime in February 2013.The workaround is then to remove WrapPack 7 and remain with WrapPack 6. Incident #2602584 Old KB# 36623