Rocket® COBOL

Hello,I recently started using MF Visual COBOL and importing old programs I've done using MS COBOL back in 1995.I noticed that some of screen section statements aren't functional under MF Cobol especially the ON ESCAPE condition in ACCEPT statement,Any idea how to make it work??** below is the a sample program that use Accept... ON ESCAPE..IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.PROGRAM-ID. NEHMECHP as "NEHMECHP".AUTHOR. NEHME YOUNES.ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.CONFIGURATION SECTION.INPUT-OUTPUT SECTION.FILE-CONTROL.SELECT F-CHP ASSIGN TO DISKORGANIZATION IS INDEXEDACCESS MODE IS DYNAMICLOCK MODE IS AUTOMATICRECORD KEY IS CHPNUM.DATA DIVISION.FILE SECTION.FD F-CHPBLOCK CONTAINS 105 RECORDSRECORD CONTAINS 39 CHARACTERSLABEL RECORDS ARE STANDARDVALUE OF FILE-ID IS "CHPBNY.DAT".01 RCHP.02 CHPNUM.03 SUB-LDGR.04 GEN-LDGR PIC 99.04 NUM PIC 9.03 CHAPTER PIC 9.02 CHPNAME PIC X(35).*****WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.77 SW PIC X VALUE SPACE.77 SW1 PIC X VALUE SPACE.77 MSG PIC X(40).77 W-NAME PIC

i don't understand why download files are not on the same places and no Information for the 2 possibilities:1. Visual Cobol 5.x Personal Edition, free/validity for 1 year, limited to 2200 program lines    only up2 is necessary and disponible2. Visual Cobol 5.x Trial Version, free/validity 1 month, no Limitation    for this Version, only up2 is necessary and disponibleFor this two Versions, why the updates files are not visible/disponible for all students, testers for the durability for 1 month or 1 year. This will have Errors that will be send on Support, that is not necessary.i hope that MF will answer positive for all this customers and interessed persons on VC

 We are moving from Net Express to Visual COBOL and a lot of the developers want the text editor in Visual COBOL to behave in the same way as the Net Express editor. I am aware of some of the settings you can make in Visual COBOL (e.g. enable virtual space), but I haven't found out how to get exactly the same behaviour. Is that even possible? Most problems arise when you paste code from other editors (and I posted a question about that some weeks ago and got the answer that that will be fixed in version 6), but there are other issues as well. So, is there a "Net Express" setting you can use in Visual COBOL?

The RANDOM function documentation page doesn't give sufficient information on the range of accepted values for argument-1.Perhaps someone can shed light on my following two questions:What range of seed values is accepted?How are values treated that are exceeding the allowed range?  »  Are they truncated?  »  Are only the lower bits used?  »  Or the upper bits?  »  Are the leftmost digits used?  »  Or the rightmost?  »  How many of them?  »  Is a `MOD` function applied to the seed value?It is common to use the current date/time as a seed value for RANDOM to get a "truely pseudo random" sequence. So I used below piece of code to create an appropriate seed value. But I have no clue on how the seed value I'm providing to the RANDOM function is processed by the compiler.If the compiler only took the first few digits (which is the date part) then this wouldn't result in different random sequence resul

Scot Nielsen previews some of the refactoring capabilities of the upcoming Micro Focus Visual COBOL 6.0 release. Register for the release webinar here. Watch the full preview video here. #Videos#Webinars

I have to show a little window at the lower right corner of the screen.And it's the only window of this instance.So I display my standard window and modify it via the handle to give it a line and col.This almost works. But every new window is positioned at another location.It makes no difference if I close each instance before I open a new one or if I start 4 independent instances simultanously.BTW: There is always a cyclus of 4. The 5th instance is located at the same spot where the first one was.How can I display a window at a given position ? 

I've been trying to WRITE a record to a relative organized file:SELECT carMasterFile ASSIGN ".\\~Files\\Vehicle Master File.dat"  LOCK MODE IS MANUAL  ORGANIZATION IS RELATIVE  ACCESS MODE IS RANDOM  RELATIVE KEY IS cmfIndex  FILE STATUS IS cmfStatus.I intentially tried to insert a record with an index/key value that's already existing in the file to check my error handling sentences.Yet, instead of getting the expected file status 2/2 ("Duplicate key and duplicates are not allowed.") I got a file status of 2/3 ("Key not found."): The documentation page on file status states that I should have gotten a file status of 2/2.Why did I get a 2/3 error?   

Your infrastructure may need to be upgraded at some point in time. While doing so, you may encounter some rather perplexing obstacles that you have never come across. Learn how to overcome some of these pitfalls to help move your Micro Focus COBOL into the modern age. See how scripting can impact your code Get some ideas on how to manage the performance of your system/code Access the webinar and slide deck here. #Webinars

0 down vote favorite I have spent the better part of 3 days trying to get this package to install. The jist of my problem is that the installer can't find a java on my machine. It keeps failing telling me that the product needs an Oracle Java of at least 1.6.0 and restart the installation when one is installed. Let me describe my problem: Windows 7 64bit and Java Oracle 1.7.0_04 (this was installed into the (x86) folder so I am assuming that this is the 32bit version. The current version of Visual Cobol runs with Eclipse. They supply a 32bit Visual Cobol and a 32bit Eclipse. The installation instructions say I must install a 32bit Java for installation. Here is my JAVA_HOME: c:\\program files(x86)\\java\\jdk1.7.0_04 Here is my JRE_HOME: c:\\program files (x86)\\java\\jre7 Here is my PATH: .;c:\\program files(x86)\\java\\jdk1.7.0_04\\bin;C:\\Windows\\system32;C:\\Windows;C:\\Windows\\System32\\Wbem;C:\\Windows\\System32\\WindowsPowerShell\\v1.0\\;C:\\Program Files\\ibm\\gsk8

While debugging, after having stepped over a READ operation, I often find myself in an urge to see what has actually been read from the file.One could go seek for a matching file descriptor entry in code, but many times this is cumbersome.So, I'd like to propose to not only display a file status for a file handle, but also all corresponding file descriptors assigned to that file handle. I suggest the file descriptor information be displayed as child item(s) of the file status: Current Situation Desired Situation  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------FYI: Screenshot of sample project used to create the above mock:

I have a need to convert  COBOL-produced text-based reports into PDF format.  The Form Feed character results from “AFTER ADVANCING PAGE” in the COBOL code and causes superfluous blank pages in the PDF output.  Is there a pattern to follow for producing  reports in Visual COBOL that are destined for conversion to PDF?  (using Visual COBOL 5.0 Eclipse).#pdf#formfeed

Part 1 - Was sind Web Services? - Einführung Web Services sind eine etablierte Technologie der digitalen Informationsverarbeitung, die in klassischen COBOL-Anwendungen bisher relativ wenig genutzt worden sind. Ausgehend davon wird in diesem Teil eine Einführung in die Technologie der Web Services gegeben.Part 1 Video Part 2 - Technik hinter Web Services Nachdem im 1. Teil eine Einführung in die Thematik der Web Services gegeben wurde, wird in diesem Teil die Technik, die hinter Web Services steht, beleuchtet. Dabei fokussiert sich dieses Video hauptsächlich auf den Datenaustausch mit SOAP und REST.Part 2 Video Part 3 - Web Service mit Visual COBOL (Theorie) Da Web Services in klassischen COBOL-Anwendungen bisher relativ wenig genutzt werden, Visual COBOL jedoch seinen Anwendern diese Möglichkeit bietet, wird in diesem Teil auf die Erstellung und den Umgang mit Web Services in Visual COBOL und auf das Deployment auf dem Enterprise Server eingegangen. Part 3 Video Part 4 - Web Serv

I have a COM object that was written originally in NetExpress and was recently imported into Visual CoBOL for VS 2017.  When I install the COM object on my local development machine, I am able to activate it with no issues.  When I install it on the Server, I get a Dynamic bind error, using the same programs that appears to reference a version issue.  I have included screenshots of the error, and version of run-time installed and of the version installed on my local development machine. In the past we had to install a complete development license on the servers in order to have this work, is this still required under visual CoBOL or is there something else we can do?server.JPG

I noticed a few glitches with the Extract to Copybook quick action: 

If I copy the following text from Notepad ...[tab][space[space]***********************************************************[tab][space[space]*[tab][space[space][space]V000-VALIDATE SECTION.[tab][space[space]*[tab][space[space]***********************************************************and paste it into the Text Editor in Visual COBOL, the tabs are kept despite having selected "Insert spaces" in Tools - Options - Text Editor - Micro Focus COBOL - Tabs and having checked "Format pasted code" in Tools - Options - Text Editor - Micro Focus COBOL - Formatting.If I paste the same text into Net Express the tabs are replaced with spaces.In both Visual COBOL and Net Express the cursor was located at position 1 when I pasted.I'm using Visual Studio 2019 and Visual COBOL 5.0 with the latest updates. The project type is an INT/GNT project. 

The expanded copybook viewer doesn't follow tabulator settings: This also results in Visual Studio features like "highlight other occurences of same identifier" failing to highlight the correct text position: 

From this Micro Focus documentation on CALL prototypes I believe to have learned that I can write program prototypes (just like in a C/C header file) and use them to have Visual COBOL validate my CALL parameters. As far as I understood, a program prototype is created by appending the IS EXTERNAL qualifier to the prototype's Program-Id.Yet, I don't seem to be able to correctly describe my program parameters. The JIT compiler is always complaining (see error messages in the screenshot below).The error messages I get don't give hints on what to do in order to solve the problem, so they are leaving me in a dead-end situation.What am I doing wrong?Your answers are highly appreciated. Please find my sample project in the ZIP file attached.And below is a screenshot depicting the main source file (containing the prototype, the corresponding contained subprogram, and the main program).  

I'm trying to install Visual COBOL 5.0 for visual studio (visual studio 2019) - but i get the following error, as soon as i create a new project ---   " The "MicroFocus.Cobol.BuildTasks.Cobol" task could not be loaded from the assembly C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio\\2019\\Community\\MSBuild\\Micro Focus\\Visual COBOL\\v1.0\\MicroFocus.COBOL.BuildTasks.dll. Method 'get_SourceFileExtension' in type 'MicroFocus.COBOL.BuildTasks.CreateCobolManifestResourceName' from assembly 'MicroFocus.COBOL.BuildTasks, Version=16.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=0412c5e0b2aaa8f0' does not have an implementation. Confirm that the <UsingTask> declaration is correct, that the assembly and all its dependencies are available, and that the task contains a public class that implements Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITask." --- i've tried to uninstall both software afresh again but still get the same error. Kindly help

We are running Visual COBOL 5.0 compiled to native code and running on Windows 10 with a DB2 database hosted on AIX.  When we run that code, SQL queries using HIGH-VALUES and LOW-VALUES moved into host variables  work as expected.  When we try to run the same executables/workload bound against the same db running in a Windows Docker container, the values for high-values and low-values  or incorrect and queries using those COBOL values fail.  How do we configure our Windows Docker environment for consistent use of low-values and high-values?#docker#Windows#High-values#VisualCOBOL#LOW-VALUES

When I hover over an identifier that's being used in a string reference modification, "communications with the remote debugger have been lost": In detail, this is the error message:  Attached please find a sample project for reproducing the issue.

This is rather a COBOL related question than a Micro Focus related question, I'm afraid:From other programming languages I'm used to be able to provide literals instead of data items when I'm using them as a constant value (a so-called "r-value").When such compiler complains that it doesn't know how to coerce the literal value to an expected data type, I'm usually able to add a cast modifier to that literal value, so the compiler will know how to store the literal value.Is it possible in COBOL, too, to enter such literal and provide a casting expression along? E.g.:CALL "PrintThis" USING BY CONTENT "This is a test." AS PIC A(50).

Running Acu Extend 9.1 & 9.2 on Windows.This is probably an easy question but I could not find the answer in the documentation.  Is there a way to get the PROGRAM-ID of the currently running program?  I know about C$CALLEDBY, which won't work in this case, as we have a copybook that is used in many programs, and want to log when specific actions are done, and need to know which program is running. Is there something similar to C$CALLEDBY to give the value of the PROGRAM-ID of the current program?ThanksTony

Very often, an identifier's data tooltip in Visual COBOL debugger is still being displayed even when the mouse pointer leaves the identifier and hovers over another identifier or is moved far away from the original identifier: Occasionally, the data tool tip is removed in-time (see animation when hovering over nameLength data item). So, I suspect there is a failure in recognizing when an identifier is left.

Today I launched my first debugging session with Visual COBOL and recognized a number of errors. I took a screen recording of my session. Please find the screen recording attached along with the project file in the attachment.The errors I recognized and recorded are (briefly):Text capitalization fails to be read correctly from option settings occasionally.Debugger value tool-tips are displayed for literals.Debugger value tool-tips result in errors.

Chris,can you inform us when up8 for vc5.0 is ready for downloadcan you inform us when vc6.0 will be released? What are the new Features?Thanks