Rocket® COBOL

Created On:  7 July 2010 Problem: We created a COBOL COM Server program using the Net Express Class Wizard and have a file defined within the Input-Output section within the Object itself.  When trying to open the file for output a file status 9/004 "Invalid Filename" is returned. Resolution: This is happening due to the location of the file definition within the COM Server program.  Although it will compile cleanly, file definitions cannot be placed within the Instance Object itself.  Files need to be defined as shown in the following example:$set ooctrl( p)                                                   class-id. testobj           &nbs

Created On:  19 May 2010 Problem: There exists documentation that shows how to pass an argument in a C$JAVA CALL, but it's not easy to understand the correct syntax when more arguments are involved. Resolution: This article explains how to pass more than one single argument in a C$JAVA CALL, when a COBOL program interhoperates with a JAVA class. You can pass as many arguments as the method requires. You will need to specify the correct method signature, which you can obtain using the Java class dissassembler utility "javap":$ javap -s myclassLet's say you've got a method that takes two Strings and three numbers as arguments, and returns an integer.The signature would be "(Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/String;III)I" (this will be returned by javap).CALL "C$JAVA" USING CJAVA-CALL,                          &n

Created On:  01 July 2010 Problem: I need to limit the number of rows that will be returned in a cursor fetch to a specified number when using SQL Server.  How is this done? Resolution: The SELECT TOP (n) construct can be used to limit the number of rows returned to (n) number of rows.Example: Only 2 rows will be returned until the fetch results in a SQLCODE = 100 no more records.EXEC SQL                                                   DECLARE CSR3 CURSOR FOR SELECT TOP (2)                           "A"."CustomerID"          &nbsp

Created On:  29 June 2010 Problem: I need to uninstall a Liant product on a Windows machine. However, I need to perform the uninstall silently without using the GUI uninstaller. How is this done? Resolution: In order to uninstall RM/COBOL v12.02 from a machine you can use the Windows Instrumentation command-line interface (WMIC).  The Windows Instrumentation command-line interface is available on any PC running Windows XP Professional, or later.Below is the syntax for two WMIC functions that are necessary for uninstalling products.-------------------------------------To get a list of installed products:wmic product get nameTo uninstall a product:wmic product where name="application name" call uninstall /nointeractiveWhere, application name, is the name of the program you wish to uninstall (use the exact name provided by the previously generated list).-------------------------------------The following examples demonstrate how to use the Windows Instrumentati

Created On:  19 March 2010 Problem: Server Express 2.2 has a different behavior than Server Express 5.1 WS4.A difference identified regards ACCEPT behavior which can be seen in the following code: ACCEPT ST-BANK-AMOUNT AT LINE 07 COLUMN 15            WITH AUTO UNDERLINE HIGHLIGHT UPDATE       ON EXCEPTION                                       DISPLAY "ERROR BANK AMOUNT" AT 2302           ACCEPT DUMMY AT 2379 SECURE                   GO TO ACCEPT-ST-BANK-AMOUNT              NOT ON EXCEPTION   &

Created On:  01 October 2009 Problem: The runtime routine CBL_DIR_SCAN_READ returns a value of 127 which is not a file status code as described in the Net Express help. Resolution: Here are 4 possibilities to get the returncode 127 in CBL_DIR_SCAN_READ even the CBL_DIR_SCAN_START returns 0 (o.k.) (there might be more…): 1. When wildcards are used in CBL_DIR_SCAN_START the appropriate FLAG must be set in CBL_DIR_SCAN_START.2. When quotes are used to specify the search pattern in CBL_DIR_SCAN_START (see: KB 1444).3. When pattern-length in CBL_DIR_SCAN_START does not specify the real length of the pattern but e.g. the length of the buffer, it might cause a 127.4. When the handle in CALL “CBL_DIR_SCAN_READ” is not passed BY REFERENCE. See the attachment for a demo. Incident #2355833 Attachments KB-DirScan.zip Old KB# 31273

Created On:  20 October 2009 Problem: In a migration project the WRITE statement behaves differently from the origin. Resolution: The WRITE statement changes its behavior dependent on the selected dialect. When using:      $set dialect"OSVS" or      $set dialect"ENTCOBOL"the statement            WRITE RECwill delete the REC in       FD  MYFILE LABEL RECORDS OMITTED.01 REC PIC X(80).accordingly to the OSVS COBOL resp. Enterprise COBOL on the mainframe. When using      *set dialect"MF"the statement            WRITE RECwill keep REC unchanged. If the dialect is unsupported, where the sources came from, either choose a better dialect to be closer to the origin or some code may need to be added to the WRITE statement. Incident

Created On:  19 March 2010 Problem: I was trying to execute a batch file when this error appears: Can't open message file '/opt/cobol/cobdir/rts.msg'. Resolution: This is an Oracle message.  The Oracle runtime needs to be built as described in Knowledge Base Article: 4093 http://kb.microfocus.com/article.aspx?article=4093&p=2 Old KB# 31278

Created On:  23 June 2010 Problem: When compiling using the Net Express IDE the error "Micro Focus License Manager Service not Running" is displayed in the output window. Resolution: Check the setting of the COBDIR environment variable either in the computers environment or in the project properties under the IDE settings.This error will occur if COBDIR is set to point to an invalid location or it is overwriting the current value in the environment which is the default location of "C:\\Program Files\\Micro Focus\\Studio Enterprise Edition 6.0\\base\\bin".COBDIR should not point to the location and name of the directives file cobol.dir.It should instead be set to the folder name where your executables reside if they are .int or .gnt.When COBDIR is set you should always include the current setting so that the new setting will be appended to the current one instead of overwriting it.Example:COBDIRC:\\testdir;%COBDIR%In most cases you do not need to set

Created On:  05 October 2009 Problem: Starting an ASP.NET program can causes a delay of 90 seconds before even the smallest "Hello COBOL world"-program begins execution. This might happen, when the computer has no access to the external internet Microsoft Network Monitor shows that the program vainly tries to access crl.verisign.net on port 80 several times. Resolution: The web address crl.verisign.net belongs to the Certificate Revocation List @ VeriSign. The program tries to verify whether its certificate has been revoked or not. 1. A certificate revocation list (CRL) for the site could be manually imported, following:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996972(EXCHG.65).aspxhttp://www.amug.org/~glguerin/opinion/revocation.html#obtaining 2. Following the description in MSDN:http://blogs.msdn.com/pfedev/archive/2008/11/26/best-practice-generatepublisherevidence-in-aspnet-config.aspxorhttp://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowssecurity/thread/3c6

Created On:  19 March 2010 Problem: After upgrading from Server Express 2.2 to Server Express 5.1 WS4 it was noticed that there are some differences in behavior among the two systems in terms of the DISPLAY command behavior.For example:01  DISP-LINE-1.                                        05 FILLER       PIC X(01) VALUE SPACES.             05 FILLER       PIC X(10) VALUE "ABCDEFGHIJ".       05 FILLER       PIC X(05) VALUE SPACES.             05 FLD-0011     PIC X(02) value "AA" If the program contains the following state

Created On:  22 June 2010 Problem: The ASLM Semaphore Error 1002 was received when a Net Express 5.1 executable was called from within a trigger program. Resolution: The error occurred because a previous version of Net Express' runtime files were used during execution instead of the current version the application uses.For example, a user originally built an .exe with Net Express 3.1.  They upgraded their environment to Net Express 5.1 and recompiled their application with Net Express 5.1.  However, they inadvertently copied a runtime .dll into the Net Express 5.1 Bin directory.  Including a prior version .dll in the Bin directory will generate an Error 1002.  Remove any .dll's that were copied over into the Bin directory to eliminate the error. Incident #2460776 Old KB# 31264

Created On:  19 March 2010 Problem: Compiling This error occurs while Animating a COBOL program. This error occurs when the user has set the COBTERMINFO environment variable to point to a customized terminfo file. Resolution: When running under the control of the Animator any screen output is cached in memory. If you swap to the user screen (i.e. by pressing F2 or by executing an ACCEPT), the contents of the cached screen are displayed. The program has no terminal of its own because it's under the control of the animator. So, when the program writes to the terminal, it is actually passing terminal sequences to the animator to be decoded and cached. The Animator uses a generic terminal definition called 'mfdebug', which defines all the capabilities required This error only occurs if a customer is using a different terminfo directory, or has deleted some files from the Micro Focus provided one. When a process is being debugged by Animator, if the application then

Created On:  19 March 2010 Problem: When trying to start the data editor on an AIX machine, dfed, the following error appears:Execution error : file 'sysfld'error code: 40, pc=0, call=1, seg=0 40     National Language Initialization not set up correctlyEven setting up the .profile file according to the manual with the following does not help.LANG=fr_FRexport LANG Resolution: This is something specific to an AIX platform.The only way to get this to another locale setting is to do the following:To change the locale setting, use the Manage Language Environment menu in SMIT, or edit the file /etc/environment and ensure that value LANG=en_US is set.After rebooting the system, you should now see that the output of locale is as follows:# localeLANG=en_USLC_COLLATE="en_US"LC_CTYPE="en_US"LC_MONETARY="en_US"LC_NUMERIC="en_US"LC_TIME="en_US"LC_MESSAGES="en_US"LC_ALL= Old KB# 31276

Created On:  16 July 2010 Problem: Using Syncsort software to sort Micro Focus COBOL modules, the Syncsort software is migrated to the Synsort DMExpress software. Unfortunately, it is not possible for Micro Focus modules to call DMExpress. Resolution: With the old Syncsort software when linking Syncsort to COBOL programs, the CALLSORT compiler directive is used with or without the value EXTSM ( cob –C CALLSORT or cob –C CALLSORT=EXTSM ) However, with DMExpress software , the CALLSORT compiler directive must be set to EXTSM1 ( cob –C CALLSORT=EXTSM1 ) and the executable must be generated with-IEXTSM1 ( upper-case “I” ) Incident #2453981 Old KB# 31186#SYNCSORT#Merge#Sort

Created On:  8 June 2010 Problem: The Net Express documentation shows that the display method can be called on the Java Exception object in order to output the error text to the console.     entry "Jexception" using lnkException.           invoke lnkException "display" How does one modify this example so that the text can be accessed in a move statement to a COBOL pic x field? Resolution: The javasup class must be used to accomplish this task. Try the following as the main program:      $set ooctrl ( p-f)       program-id. ExceptionCatcher.        class-control.           SimpleClass is class "$JAVA$SimpleClass"           EntryCallback is class "entrycll"  &n

Created On:  16 June 2010 Problem: I need a display that is larger than the default 80 columns by 25 rows. Resolution: You can use the TERM-ATTR "COLUMNS" and "ROWS" configuration keywords to increase the number of columns and rows that the Runtime will display on the terminal.  These configuration records will need to be added to your RM/COBOL Runtime configuration file or placed in a new RM/COBOL configuration file.For example, the following record in your configuration file will yield a screen that is 100 columns wide with 30 rows: TERM-ATTR COLUMNS=100 ROWS=30For more information regarding terminal configuration, please see "Chapter 10: Configuration" in the RM/COBOL User's Guide.  You can obtain the RM/COBOL User's Guide from our web site at:  http://supportline.microfocus.com/Documentation/RMCobol.asp Incident #2457869 Old KB# 31190

Created On:  8 June 2010 Problem: OpenOffice is a suite of application tools that provide a freeware alternative to using Microsoft Office.The Calc application is the alternative to Excel.OpenOffice has a COM interface but it is not compatible with the COM interface provided by Microsoft Office.A sample is needed to show how to access and manipulate a Calc spreadsheet using COM from a Net Express client so that the spreadsheet is saved as an Excel compatible format. Resolution: The following is a sample Net Express program which will create a Open Office Calc spreadsheet using the COM interface and then save the spreadsheet as an Excel compatible document:      $set sourceformat(variable)                                            &n

Created On:  8 June 2010 Problem: While using Visual Studio to develop managed COBOL applications the Intellisense of Visual Studio stops working. Resolution: The items to check in the Visual Studio IDE are the options for the Text Editor under Tools->Options. Under heading COBOL->General, Auto list members and Parameter information should be checked and under Miscellaneous, AutoOutlining, Customize Editor for COBOL and Enable background...should all be True.You might try toggling these off and on so the IDE recognizes them. Incident #2287744 Old KB# 31159

Created On:  8 June 2010 Problem: This example shows how to create and populate an ADO.NET Dataset in a VB.NET program and then pass the dataset as an argument to a COBOL .NET class. Resolution: The attached example PassDSVB.zip contains two .NET projects and a solution file.The example was created using Visual Studio 2008 and Net Express 5.1.Running the example requires that an instance of SQL Server be running and that the Northwind sample database be present.Unzip the example to your hard drive C:\\ while retaining the folder structure in the .zip file.You will end up with two folders:C:\\PassDSVB and C:\\PassDSCOBStart Visual Studio 2008 and open the solution file C:\\PassDSVB\\PassDSVB.slnSelect Build Solution from the Build menu.Open up the source file PassDSVB.vb and view the code for the method Button1_Click.The connection to SQL Server uses the Server alias ".".Please change this if necessary to the instance name that you are using.Step into the code usin

Created On:  7 June 2010 Problem: When working with COBOL files that are defined as Heap Files using the Filetype"14" directive, a close on the file would sometimes result in a bad file status such as a 9/013 "File not Found" error being returned.There is a problem with the logic in the File Handler for the CLOSE statement handling of Heapfiles where the return-code was being checked prior to the actual close operation being performed. This means that if there was a bad status code from a previous operation in the File Handler then the error would actually be reported for the close because the status code area was not cleared out. So the close wasn't really failing, it was just been reported as bad because there was another operation that actually failed. Resolution: This problem has been fixed in Net Express 5.1 Wrappack 4 Hotfix 5 and above. Incident #2448545 Old KB# 31153

Created On:  16 June 2010 Problem: The products named "Server Express" and "Server for COBOL" have an install script named "install".  Inside this script, there is a "tar" command to extract files.  On Solaris 10, the install script fails because the tar command cannot successfully un-tar the files.  It reports this error repeatedly: tar: ././@LongLink: typeflag 'L' not recognized, converting to regular fileAfter which the script might say: "Failed to untar due to lack of disk space."or "install error, check disk space/permissions and try again" Resolution: Edit and modify the "install" script, replacing the tar command with the alternative tar utility named "gtar".On Solaris, the "gtar" command is usually found at:   /usr/sfw/bin/gtarIf not, search for "gtar" elsewhere on your Solaris system, or contact Solaris support and ask

Created On:  07 June 2010 Problem: The following error is encountered when attempting to install or upgrade Web-to-Host 6.0:“Error 2753.The File 'nmservicemanager.exe.2E19ED1F_0A9B_43F4_BA8B_60F8E67C8891' is not marked for installation.” Resolution: This problem is encountered when a previous installation of Web-to-Host software on the workstation cannot be uninstalled. Please perform the following steps in order to resolve the issue: • Download and install Microsoft Windows Installer Cleanup Utility on the workstation.• Close all open Web-to-Host sessions.• From the program list, launch Microsoft Windows Installer Cleanup Utility • Remove all detected versions of Web-to-host software and reboot the workstation.• Launch the session to fire off web-to-host install again Microsoft Windows installer utility download link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301/en-us Incident #2456965 Old KB# 31182#Rumba#OnWeb#Web-to-Host

Created On:  15 June 2010 Problem: I am using an ODBC enabled tool that requires an ODBC version x compliant driver.  What version of ODBC does Relativity support? Resolution: What version of ODBC does Relativity support?Relativity is ODBC 2.0 compliant.  However, it does implement some SQL grammar and scalar functions from later versions of the ODBC standard.The following SQL statements are supported by Relativity:CREATE INDEXCREATE TABLECREATE VIEWDELETEDROP TABLEDROP VIEWINSERTSELECTUPDATEThe following SQL clauses and predicates are also supported:AVGCOUNTMAXMINSUMBETWEENHAVINGEXISTSINUNIONUNION ALLGROUP BYORDER BYAdditionally the following ODBC scalar functions are supported:CONCATCONVERTCURDATECURTIMEDATABASEDAYOFMONTHDAYOFWEEKIFLCASELEFTLENGTHLOCATELTRIMMODMONTHNULLQUARTERRIGHTRTRIMSUBSTRINGUCASEUSERYEARFor more information regarding Relativity's supported SQL grammar, please see the Relativity Data Client help file.For detailed information about the arg

Created On:  8 June 2010 Problem: An application defines multiple ISAM files some of which are in the default format of IDXFORMAT"3" and some of which are in the large format of IDXFORMAT"8". How does one specify multiple IDXFORMAT file types within a single application? Resolution: Multiple IDXFORMAT file types can be specified within a single application either in the file handler configuration file, EXTFH.CFG or within the application source code itself using the IDXFORMAT compiler directive.Example:Program source code is as follows:     id division.     program-id.   testfile.     file-control.         select default-isam1 assign to "DISAM1.DAT"                               &nbsp