Cobol editors

You can install Visual COBOL for Eclipse and Visual COBOL for Visual Studio on the same machine but they are each a distinct product with their own installers.

Visual COBOL will not install into Visual Web Developer but will install into Visual Studio and then you can use the ASP.NET template support to develop Web applications or Web sites.

I've downloaded Visual Cobol for Visual Studio from the website.  Now do I need to download the Visual Cobol for Eclipse from the website or can I just download Eclipse from another location.

I've downloaded Visual Cobol for Visual Studio from the website.  Now do I need to download the Visual Cobol for Eclipse from the website or can I just download Eclipse from another location.

Since Visual COBOL for Eclipse is a separate product from Micro Focus, you would need to obtain it in the same way you obtained Visual COBOL for Visual Studio.

Like I stated previously, the Visual COBOL for Visual Studio and Visual COBOL for Eclipse products are two different products so if you would like to use both then you need to install both versions of the product.

Do you have a real development need to use both Visual Studio and Eclipse IDEs simultaneously for development?

No, just looking for the best IDE and comparing them side by side seems to be the best way.  Unless you know a better way, I'm open.  And one more question, on the Cobol for the pc vs Cobol for the mainframe, the cobol for the mainframe I'm assuming you can only code the programs then compile them, is this correct?

No, just looking for the best IDE and comparing them side by side seems to be the best way.  Unless you know a better way, I'm open.  And one more question, on the Cobol for the pc vs Cobol for the mainframe, the cobol for the mainframe I'm assuming you can only code the programs then compile them, is this correct?

Your selection of the IDE might also be based on what your deployment target is as they support different code types.

Visual COBOL for Visual Studio provides support for development of native Windows applications or those that target the .NET Framework. If you are looking for tools to modernize your application with a GUI front end using Microsoft's Winforms or WPF or to create a Windows web site or WCF Web Service to run under IIS then this would be your best bet.

Visual COBOL for Eclipse provides support for development of native Windows applications or you can compile your applications as Java byte code to be run under a JVM. You can also use VC for Eclipse in conjunction with the Visual COBOL DevHub product to do remote development on Linux/Unix systems.

You might want to take a look at the Product Overview here:

If by COBOL for the mainframe you mean Enterprise Developer, it allows for full mainframe COBOL development on the PC including support for CICS, JCL, IMS, etc. where you can develop and debug your applications as well as run them in the Enterprise Server product on the PC.

For more information on the Enterprise products please look here:

Thanks