Rocket® COBOL

Problem: This COBOL syntax uses the SPECIAL REGISTER TALLY: inspect Avariable tallying TALLY for all space TALLY SPECIAL REGISTER is usable ONLY WHEN Compiler directive OSVS or VSC2 is set Extract of Net Express on-line help using the keyword TALLY special register:   !!!!!!   OSVS or VSC2 have to be set *   TALLY 9(5) COMP *   The TALLY special register contains information produced by the EXAMINE...TALLYING statement. *   It is valid as a data-name in a Procedure Division statement wherever an elementary data item can be referenced. Resolution:       *SET VSC2       $SET OSVS        IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.        PROGRAM-ID. TESTtally.        ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.        DATA DI

Problem: When the statement "EXEC SQL INCLUDE aFile END-EXEC" is used, ORACLE precompiler PROCOB looks for a file named 'Afile.cob' on the current directory AND, if not found on the current directory, looks for it on DIRECTORIES pointed by the environment variable INCLUDE. How to manage ORACLE precompiler PROCOB to find these files despite they don't have the cob extension? Resolution: Use the Micro Focus CP Preprocessor so COPYFILEs are "expanded" before ORACLE precompiler has to deal with them ( ie: since CP will have expand  COPYFILEs, procob won't have to look for them....) Sample Paste of Net Express directives of a Net Express project: %FILENAME COBIDY(%TARGETDIR) WB3 WB CSI ANIM EDITOR(MF2) ENSUITE(3) PREPLIST  LIST() osext"pco" copyext"cob,pco,cbl,cpy" p(cobsql) csqlt=ora8 makesyn end-c comp-5=yes   p(CP)  C S T W ENDP; Note that, since the Prep

Problem: Used the ODBC data source administrator (via the control panel) to add a user DSN, then clicked on the "test connect" button and the following error occurred:      specified driver could not be loaded due to system error 1157 Resolution: The common causes for this type of error is 1) Don't have the necessary ODBC drivers installed 2) The appropriate DBMS client software is not installed. 3) System Path is not set correctly. Check the above causes and see if it helps resolve this problem.  If the problem still exists then contact Micro Focus SupportLine.  Check our website (http://www.microfocus.com) for SupportLine contact numbers (http://www.microfocus.com/AboutMicroFocus/contact/supportlinebycountry.asp) Old KB# 3815

Problem: Release 4.0: The following COBOL code gets compiled without any ERROR - PERFORM PERFORM Paragraph-Name - IF Field NOT = TO SPACE The compiled code runs without any error and there is currently not really a issue with the execution. However, the customer is developing for the Mainframe (Bull GCOS7) and when the coding is brought back to the Mainframe the compiler does not allow to compile the above lines as they are not valid COBOL code. Can this be addressed in a future fixpack ? Resolution: No, it seems there are bugs while compiling this under Net Express 4.0, but 1) nested PERFORMs are allowed. 2)" = TO" is a peculiarity of the OSVS mainframe, so Micro Focus allow it too. Look up 'Relation Condition' in the Net Express COBOL language documentation: > OSVS: Note that " = TO", "> THAN" and "< THAN" are accepted. < Old KB# 3833

Problem: You may have installed Net Express with .NET support, and is now want to call a legacy system .dll from a .NET application. Resolution: The legacy system .dll is termed "unmanaged" code, as it has not been created from within the .NET environment. You need to add the .dll as a reference in your .NET project. Go into Help in your .NET project and select 'Contents', 'Micro Focus Studio', 'Programming', 'Interoperability', 'Interoperability Overview', and select the link to 'Interoperating with Unmanaged COBOL'. This gives several options, including such things as creating and registering COM objects etc. The easiest way would be the method suggested under the heading 'Using Platform Invoke to Call Unmanaged COBOL'. Old KB# 3823

Problem: When you have a 'read only' field and you jump from one field to the next within your program, the cursor will still jump into this 'read only' field as well and not to the next field. Is it possible to jump over the read only field straight to the next read/write field? Resolution: This behaviour is as expected. It's part of the Windows functionality. Even thought you cannot change data in a 'read only' field, you still might want to be able to copy the data inside and therefore you need to be able to got in this field for copy purposes. If you really would like to jump over this field to the next read/write field, you need to change this to for example a 'read only' display field. That way it will only 'display' the contents. However you won't have a box/frame so you might want to draw it around yourself. Old KB# 3765

Problem: Running cob, cobrun or similar on SCO Unix 5 you get a message of the type: Dynamic Linker : /cobol/bin/rts32_t  can't set protections on segment of length 0*602 at 0*804800 Resolution: This error occurs if you are trying to run the Server Express product in SCO Openserver 5. Server Express is not available for this platform. Please see http://supportline.microfocus.com/productreleaselevels/unix.asp for available products. Currently (Server Express 4.0 SP2 & Server Express 5.0) can only run on SCO UnixWare 7.1.3/7.1.4/Open Server 6.0. Old KB# 3678

Problem: Release 4.0: A customer upgraded from OCDS to Server Express 4.0 SP2 and run into problems with cobtidy and cobexit. Running a c program calling Cobol programs and doing cobtidy before the exit(0) of the C program results in hanging. The problem is that the C program is hanging just after the cobtidy() and waiting forever.Having tried cobexit() instead of normal C exit and removed cobtidy, this time it hangs with cobexit()! Resolution: Solution is to compile with -t for multi threaded. OCDS and Server Express are not the same products and multi threaded (-t) is one of them. With Server Express you have to specifically include this in the compile command. Old KB# 3698

Problem: I am trying to animate a process on another machine, using dynamic attachment, but it says I don't have permission to access the application.  I am using the same user ID on both machines - why is it not working? Resolution: The user ID was the same on both machines, but the group ID was different.  Changing the group ID solved the problem. Old KB# 3677

Problem: Installing ServerExpress on SuSE SLES Resolution: If you are want to install ServerExpress on a SuSE SLES you need to install the gcc package before ServerExpress. gcc is not a package in the SuSE Standard installation and must be choosen separately. Old KB# 3705

Problem: A customer has migrated to Server Express SuSE SLES 9 X86_64 from OCDS and is re-linking their application.  They receive the following error regarding a file BS.o cob32: error reading: BS.o Resolution: This is a portability issue and actually related to more than just the one object file.  The first file to be processed threw the error.   On examination, the object origin was from a different chipset; MIPS ELF not INTEL ELF. # cob -xve "" -o myrts BS.o cob32 -C nolist -xve  -o myrts BS.o cob32: error reading: BS.o # file BS.o BS.o: ELF 32-bit MSB MIPS-I relocatable, MIPS, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped Using the locking demo: # file stockioa.o stockioa.o: ELF 32-bit LSB relocatable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped # cob -xve "" -o myrts stockioa.o cob32 -C nolist -xve  -o myrts stockioa.o Entry points defined in module: stockioa.o  &

Problem: How can you run animserv and animserv_t on a specific port, rather than using the default? Resolution: Use the syntax animservXX port=xxxxx or animservXX_t port=xxxxx(where XX is either 64 or 32) N.B. do not use ports from 0-1023. This are privileged ports only accessible by root.Old KB# 3704

Problem: All of the features of FSVIEW are available to you as a command line utility. The commands you specify on the command line define the operation to be carried out by FSVIEW. Information is returned as a scrolling screen output Resolution: In order to get dynamic file tracing for fileshare running in background, you should start fileshare with tracing and then switch it off To get a trace to file from Fileshare, you need to start fs with the options -tr f e.g. fs -s glen -sc -tr f -pf glen.pf will start a server called glen, using password file glen.pf, trace to a file and run synchrounously. To enable and disable fileshare tracing using FSVIEW use admin logon FSVIEW MFTEST server set GLEN trace toggle exit This will produce a text file fsscreen.lst in the fs start directory To get a filehandler trace for fileshare us fsview command as follows admin logon FSVIEW MFTEST server set GLEN xfhtrace toggle

Problem: =========================================== Mono-Threaded COBOL Socket client & server. =========================================== related KB: Multi-Threaded COBOL socket's server & MonoThreaded COBOL client. http://supportline.microfocus.com/mf_kb_display.asp?kbnumber=23143 Resolution: =========================================== Mono-Threaded COBOL Socket client & server. =========================================== The program server.cbl  is the socket's server ( written in COBOL ) The program client.cbl  is the socket's client ( written in COBOL ). This sample was mainly tested on AIX 5.2.0.0 with Server Express 4.0 SP2 32bits. To Compile and link the sample ============================== To compile and link  server.cbl & client.cbl, launch cl.sh cl.sh:  cob -xag server.cbl cob -xag client.cbl To run the sample ================= To run the sa

Problem: Is it possible to have text appear horizontally on the left or right sided tabs? Resolution: Unfortunately it is not possible to have a 'literal text' horizontally in the tabs, not only in Dialog System but also in Panels2 API. In the past one could do this with OS/2 but then the tabs appeared to be rather big. The only way to do this is to create a bitmap with a horizontal text and place this on the tab, instead of a 'literal text'. Old KB# 3766

Problem: Receive the following error message An error was detected while installing c:\\windows\\MFUnweb.exe The installer will attempt to undo any changes it has made to your system. Resolution: When looking at the log produced by the websync install in the temp directory it was discovered that the customer was attempting to run the the wrappack from a network drive when the directory containing the wrappack started with a $. The WebSync technology doesn't allow $ in network locations.  Placing the WrapPack in a standard location on their network and not a hidden one or copying it locally will resolve the problem. Old KB# 3521

Problem: I can't use REMOTE DEBUGGING when the operating system of the remote machine is SuSE 9 . A error message about the rm command is displayed Resolution: It is necessary to modify the file $COBDIR/bin/cobrps . The command who am i  must be modified to whoami The cobrps file must be : : #------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # @(#)cobrps   1.0 # # $Revision:   1.3  $ # $Date:   29 Jul 1999 15:59:10  $ # $Author:   RHS  $ # # Remote process list #  Output: <processid><tab><other information><newline> # # N.B. #   This script must not make ANY assumptions about the environment in which it #   executes: in particular, it must not assume that COBDIR, PATH, LIBPATH, #   LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc., are set. #-------------

Problem: This sample demonstrates file status code handling of CBL_ file handling routines Resolution: INTRODUCTION ========== This is a subroutine which converts the nonzero return  codes from CBl_ file handling routines to ANSI file  status strings of the form "9/xxx", where "xxx" is a  number documented in the Error Messages manual as a file  status. If the input value is not a valid file status, the string "Unk! " is returned.  A normal completion is X'0000', which is not a file status in the internal format expected and thus will return as "Unk! ".  Please refer  to KnowledgeBase item 21106. SOURCE FILES: ========= Program Files     Description ----------------     ----------------------------------------------------------- rc2fstat.cbl        

Problem: Server Express includes example COBOL programs in the XML tutorial, as described in the documentation.  When a person follows the directions in the tutorial, program "customerdbxml.cbl" may not compile.  A long list of compiler errors may appear, where the first error is actually the cause of the rest.  The first error message might be either: 17 working-storage section. * 803-S*******************                                                   ** **    Integrated preprocessor message **    Bad format of COPY statement - COPY ignored Or:     13 fd customer-file. *  12-S**************** 

Problem: Changing Dialog System application screensets to properly show the Visual Style layout on Windows XP. The Adobe Acrobat file and .zip file attached to this document contain the full Knowledge Base document containing the explanatory screen prints and the example application to show how to accomplish the modernization.  Please download them to view the full information. Resolution: For the past 10 years, GUI Dialog System screensets have looked more or less like the following screen shot: This screen shot was made on a Windows XP PC using the classic layout. Switching the XP operating system to the new XP style layout without any change in the Dialog System screenset will result in: which may look like XP on the first view. But only the title bar has got an XP style layout.  The rest of the features are still the classic style. This article describes how to get a full Visual Style layout on windows XP f

Problem: When a Dialog System program is busy, it does not accept input from the keyboard or mouse clicks.  This can be shown very easily by changing the default arrow-like shape of the mouse pointer to an hourglass shape, which users are generally familiar with, and changing it back when the control flow returns to the Dialog System. Resolution: The Dialog System function to accomplish this is the SET-MOUSE-SHAPE function.  It does this when the following lines are included in your dialog:      SET-MOUSE-SHAPE $WINDOW "SYS-Wait"      RETC      SET-MOUSE-SHAPE $WINDOW "SYS-ARROW" or      SET-MOUSE-SHAPE $WINDOW "SYS-Wait"      CALLOUT "MyProgram" 3 MyParameter      SET-MOUSE-SHAPE $WINDOW "SYS-ARROW" The attached demo shows the use of

Problem: "You are trying to use a data-name which you have not declared, or which you have misspelled." This error occurs at compile time.  The unknown operand is listed in the message.   Resolution: First insure that the operand is spelled correctly. Check the compiler directives used to compile the program. These may be listed in the compile command or be included from a directives file such as COBOPT.  There is a directive "REMOVE", that tells the compiler that the specified word is no longer to be considered as a COBOL Reserved Word.      If there is a   corresponding statement "REMOVE(XXXXXX)" take out this directive and try the compile again. Check with you Systems Administrator to find out why the command was removed in the first place. Old KB# 3700

Problem: How do I find files larger than a specified number of blocks? Resolution: The following script shows how one might use -size to return a full listing of files in a recursive find. We display the owner, size and location. support 1884712 ./products/SX50EAP/lib/libcobcheck.so support 1884712 ./products/SX50EAP/lib/libcobcheck.so.2 #! /bin/sh # largerthan # find a standard file from current directory, larger than n-bytes if [ $# -lt 1 ] ; then     echo "usage:  largerthan  nunmber-of-bytes   [user] "     exit 1 fi if test $2 then     USR=" -user $2 " fi find . -size $1c -type f  $USR -print | xargs ls -l | awk '{ print $3 "\\t" $5 "\\t" $9 }' Old KB# 3712

Problem: The demonstration shows the four methods of specifying directives to the Cobol compiler("cob" ccommand) Resolution: BUILD W/RELEASE:     Any version of Server Express or Object Cobol Developer Suite INTRODUCTION ========== The demonstration shows the four methods of specifying directives to the Cobol compiler ("cob" command) SOURCE FILES: ========== Note: All required files are in copydemo.tar Program Files       Description ----------------       -----------------------------------------------------------=    picpy*.cbl            Slightly modified versions of $COBDIR/demo/debug/pi.cbl Copy Files: ----------------       ----------------------------------------------------------- COPYFILE.CPY    

Problem: ========================================================== Multi-Threaded COBOL socket's server & MonoThreaded COBOL client. ========================================================== Related KB: Mono-Threaded COBOL Socket client & server. http://supportline.microfocus.com/mf_kb_display.asp?kbnumber=23142 Resolution: ========================================================== Multi-Threaded COBOL socket's server & MonoThreaded COBOL client. ========================================================== The program server.cbl  is the socket's server ( written in COBOL ) The program client.cbl  is the socket's client ( written in COBOL ). This sample was mainly tested on AIX 5.2.0.0 with Server Express 4.0 SP2 32bits. To Compile and link the sample ============================== To compile and link  server.cbl & client.cbl, launch cl.sh cl.sh:   cob -xagt &