Rocket® Visual COBOL®

My company currently uses Net Express 3.1 and will be migrating to Visual COBOL within the next several months.  We use the SPZERO compiler directive on majority of the programs we migrated off the mainframe several years ago.  This is due to having spaces in numeric fields on the old mainframe data files.  At the time of migration, it was better to use SPZERO than to modify the files/programs.  I read in the Visual COBOL documentation that SPZERO has been deprecated and is not supported in Visual COBOL.  Is there an alternate way to accomplish the same behavior as SPZERO in Visual COBOL? Thanks,Ben#VisualCOBOLautoscalemodescreenresolution#COBOL#netexpress

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.

Hi everyone,We’re excited to welcome you to the first video in a new series COBOL in Action, launching in 2026. This series is all about short, highly technical sessions packed with hands-on product demos and practical insights.In this episode, we’re diving into the Rocket COBOL Visual Studio Code extension. We’ll walk through key capabilities such as source control integration and AI features that can enhance your development workflow.We want to make this sessions as valuable for you as possible so please share your questions and feedback in the comments. If there’s a specific topic you’d like us to cover in a future session, let us know. Your input will help shape what we tackle next.Thanks for joining us, and we hope you enjoy the video!

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. 

Hello Team,Currently we have Enterprise developer already available in the system , I am trying to integrate VS Code using Rocket COBOL extension to do a BRD documentation using the Co-pilot features. We have two copybooks extension ,one with CPY and another COPYCOB. The intelisense is  able to identify the CPY copybooks but not the COPYCOB eventhough the extensions are mapped. Is there possibility to re-use the XML files of MFED for the integration of VS code.ThanksSanoop

Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2022 11.0.0 failing install on windows server 2022. Visual studio community edition is installed, version 18.4.3 and “Workload for C++ Desktop Applications “ is installed. Setup fail with error:81f40001 - Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 17.8 or later has not been detected anyone enconter this issue?

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,I am reading the book Visual COBOL. In my opinion the book is horrible. There is no punctuation in the code.  Since I am a beginner at this and Fortran, I’m not sure where it should go. So, I am putting periods at the end of every sentence. If you have read the book I am on page 14, doing the first program with Rental Agency. Also, there is no Capitalization in the text. S0, I am capitalizing words that I think are keywords.I have no idea if this is going to work.  I have another book Intro to COBOL. It  is better since it has done Cobol correctly. But I would like some help, please.Thanks for any help you can give me. Wow this site is very aggravating I keep getting post a public tag. I have 3 tags and it still is asking me for more tags, public ones.Mark

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

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).  

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

Does anyone know where I can get a copy of Visual Cobol?I have a book on the subject but the author gave the reader a bogus web address.Or do I just have to wait to be told where to go to get my copy of the compiler. I like working with Visual Studio Community.