Rocket® Visual COBOL®

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

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

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. 

Visual COBOL 11 at this point compiles to .NET Core 8.0, when you create a new project there is no option to select .NET Core 10.0On my machine I have:2.1.526 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]3.1.426 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]5.0.104 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]5.0.214 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]5.0.303 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]5.0.408 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]6.0.136 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]8.0.206 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]8.0.418 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]9.0.100-preview.3.24204.13 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]9.0.311 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]10.0.102 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]10.0.103 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]What would happen if I start my application using:MyApp.Host.exe -roll-forward LatestMajoror update my runtimeconfig.json to use rollForward? 

Good morning, I have been working in COBOL for over 20 years and I have always believed that when a main program (PA) calls a second program (PB) using `CALL PB USING field1 field2 field3` and the procedure in PB is `PROCEDURE USING field1 field2 field3`, the parameters that are put in the `using` procedure of a program (PB) should be defined in the `linkage` section, but I see in the documentation this“ Data-name-1 must be defined as a level 01 or a level 77 entry in the Linkage Section , File Section or Working-Storage Section”This raises a lot of questions for me.Has this always been the case? If the variables in PB are defined in the working storage section, what relationship do the variables in PA have with those in PB? How does assigning values ​​to variables in PB affect the variables defined in PA? Could the call be made from PA without passing those parameters?

I’m not sure if this is the right forum to ask this question. What are employers looking for when  it comes to COBOL. Is proficiency in COBOL the only requisite they want, or are they looking for other things as well? At the age of 70, and with issues like memory retention and learning new things, learning COBOL is one thing. Learning more than just a programming language may be more than I can muster.

Hi,I have found a changes in behaviour with the sql disconnect function between native COBOL (using ODBC) and .NET COBOL (using ADO) and was wondering whether these are deliberate or notScenario: I have a primary SQL connection ‘MAIN’ which is used for the majority of processing. However I have two other connections ‘ADMIN’ and ‘ALTERNATE’ which are used to perform elevated functions (ADMIN) or functions which I want disconnected from main (ALTERNATE)In native COBOL when I disconnected from one of these secondary connections it automatically reverted to the MAIN connection however in .NET COBOL this is not the case and I am finding I need to issue a ‘set connection’ .Also in native COBOL when the connection is closed it physically kills the connection to SQL - i.e. the SPID is no longer active. In NET COBOL whilst the connection is logically closed I see that the SPID still exists in SQL.  Are these changes deliberate? Peter 

Our Cobol apps run natively on a Linux host with just local logging files, and I was wondering if there is any documentation on emitting (Opentelemetry) traces to an external collector (via network).If not natively supported, maybe people have some other ideas how to bridge the gap? Maybe building some integration via “Consolidated Tracing Facility” (CTF)?Thanks for any idea!Tung

This pertains to the use of external filehandlers, where my COBOL class is compiled with CALLFH"abcdef", which in tern needs to call fh/aaaaaa.dll which exists in the sub folder fh.The COBOL has :CALL “fh/aaaaaa” using ………During animation I debug the class, debug abcdef, but when it gets to the CALL “fh/aaaaaa” it doesn’t raise an exception but doesn’t execute the code either.I can see from procmon that the assembly was indeed loaded as well as the .pdb but just ignored almost as though it was looking for the programid but that didn’t match.Is this not supported?Is there an COBOL .NET  replacement for COBPATH ?Neil 

I am trying to call non-static Java methods from an executable file since static methods work fine in this environment.  I can accomplish this using cobjrun but it seems like the $java$ is not resolved correctly without cobjrun.I have tried adding all mf*.jar from the VisualCobol/lib directory into my CLASSPATH before execution but always get a load error similar to the following:Load error : file '$java$JavaCalculator'error code: 198, pc=0, call=1, seg=0198     Load failure Here are the files that show the failure:natcobol.cbl       $set ooctrl(+p-f)       program-id. natcobol.       class-control.          claJavacalled is class "$java$JavaCalculator".      * The above maps the Java class 'JavaCalculator' to the COBOL class name 'claJavacalled'       working-storage section.        copy "javatypes.cpy".           01 hCla            object reference.           01 l1              jlong value 10.           01 l2              jlong value 5.           01 retl            jlong.           0

Hi,I am posting this question on behalf of a customer, to ensure it goes to the relevant forum and a place they they can see the post. Once I post this I'll share the link with the customer and ask to reply/comment here also.They ask:Does somebody know how to translate the following C#-Lambda-Command to Visual Cobol ?Example (the second last line):private void FlexGrid_Load(object sender, EventArgs e){string conn = Util.GetConnectionString();var ds = new DataSet();string[] tables = "Customers, Orders".Split(',');foreach (string tableName in tables){Util.FillTable(ds, tableName, conn);}// Defining relation between master and detail gridds.Relations.Add("Customers_Orders",ds.Tables["Customers"].Columns["CustomerID"],ds.Tables["Orders"].Columns["CustomerID"]);flexGrid.DataSource = ds;flexGrid.DataMember = "Customers";flexGrid.RowDetailProvider = (g, r) => new C1FlexGridRowDetail();flexGrid.AreRowDetailsFrozen = false;}}They have used the C# to COBOL convertor website but the code that