Hi, 

We use Oracle Pro*COBOL as part of the end to end COBOL application build solution which comprises of - Oracle 19C client with Visual COBOL 8 (patch version 19) and Visual Studio Professional 2022.

We are encountering since moving from patch v14 to v19 behaviour where Oracle Pro*COBOL reports an error when processing the .pco files (PCB-S-00403 i.e.  positioning of the EXEC statement as being in the wrong Area/Column i.e. held in column 8 and should be column 12), but this error in the pre-processing does not cause the Visual Studio project to fail the build in Windows. 

Running the same process in Linux using a command line driven script, the Oracle Pro*COBOL error is raised for the same issue and cause the build to halt.

Question is there something missing in the Windows Visual Studio setup (or a switch I need to set in the project properties) which is not detecting the error response from the pre-processing "procob" application? 

I have manually executed the Oracle Pro*COBOL processing for the same .pco module to make sure Pro*COBOL returns an exit code of >0 and it does return a response of '1' so Pro*COBOL pre-processing does specify this particular issue as an error condition.

Hi, 

We use Oracle Pro*COBOL as part of the end to end COBOL application build solution which comprises of - Oracle 19C client with Visual COBOL 8 (patch version 19) and Visual Studio Professional 2022.

We are encountering since moving from patch v14 to v19 behaviour where Oracle Pro*COBOL reports an error when processing the .pco files (PCB-S-00403 i.e.  positioning of the EXEC statement as being in the wrong Area/Column i.e. held in column 8 and should be column 12), but this error in the pre-processing does not cause the Visual Studio project to fail the build in Windows. 

Running the same process in Linux using a command line driven script, the Oracle Pro*COBOL error is raised for the same issue and cause the build to halt.

Question is there something missing in the Windows Visual Studio setup (or a switch I need to set in the project properties) which is not detecting the error response from the pre-processing "procob" application? 

I have manually executed the Oracle Pro*COBOL processing for the same .pco module to make sure Pro*COBOL returns an exit code of >0 and it does return a response of '1' so Pro*COBOL pre-processing does specify this particular issue as an error condition.

Hi Simon,

As I understand it, what you are reporting is that under V8.0 PU14 the Visual Studio build failed when this error occurred and under PU19 it reports the error but continues to completion, is that correct?

Is your Linux product at the same 8.0 PU19 level?

Hi Chris and Blair,

Thank you very much for getting back.

We have now moved to PU19, with no setup available on the previous PU14.  So I am not able to confirm the PCB-S-00403 error was previously reported out in pre-processing, but can definitely say this module has not been changed since introduced in mid 2019 and has never failed compiling in Visual Studio and Linux previously at PU14 or in the earlier Cobol V3 we initially used.

Linux I can confirm is at PU19 and this pre-processing error is now failing during the compiling stage.   However from a Developer perspective if this failed in Visual Studio this would make the improvement more straightforward to address.   This is one of several solutions which each have thousands of modules across differing projects so the spotting of any pre-processing errors that don't cause any compilation failure is a little like a needle in a hay stack situation.      

So we want to see these types of errors reported on if they occur as they might be few and far between. Therefore don't want to relax them.  The aspect is if there is any setting in Windows Visual Studio which needs applying as currently it is not handling the pre-processing error to currently fail the compilation. 

Hi Simon,

The Visual COBOL COBSQL preprocessor (which invokes the Pro*COBOL precompiler when you build) supports a directive named STOPCHK. When specified, this option stops compilation when the preprocessor encounters an EXEC SQL statement error, and also sends the Pro*Cobol error text to the console display. 

Could you try adding STOPCHK to your COBSQL options? These are located on the on the properties-->SQL tab.