Visual Studio for Visual Cobol

Hello jeswoope,

If you don't have Visual Studio installed already, the Visual COBOL setup will install the Shell edition of Visual Studio, which is the tool that is used to edit and work with programs.

I would recommend to download Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2012 instead of the one for Visual Studio 2010.

Regards,

Does or is the shell install enough options to program successfully or do I need the Visual Studio.  And if I do, how much is this studio and what comes with it.

Visual COBOL installed into the Visual Studio Integrated Shell contains everything you need to develop a COBOL application including editor, compiler, debugger, etc.but there are some limitations when compared to a full version of Visual Studio.

For instance, when you install into the shell, COBOL is the only language available to you, whereas in the full Visual Studio product you can have other languages such as C# or VB.NET.

There is a section in the Visual COBOL docs that covers the other limitations here:

Visual Studio is a Microsoft product but I believe that it can be purchased through your Micro Focus Account Manager. You should contact them regarding pricing and availability.

Thanks.