Micro Focus Plc has announced its first commercial Object Cobol compiler, Object Cobol Version 3.3 for Windows NT and OS/2, the 32-bit version it promised last year following the launch of the 16-bit Object Cobol Option v.3.2. The 16-bit version was basically a trial to get Cobol programmers used to the syntax and was an add-on to the Micro Focus Cobol Workbench. Now developers will be able to distribute applications created with Object Cobol, says Micro Focus. Object Cobol Version 3.3 is the starting point of the company’s commercial endeavours in this area and it expects its hundreds of thousands of Cobol users to upgrade to it over the next year. The Newbury, Berkshire-based company describes Object Cobol as its base level product and says it will be moving all of its tools over to an object framework, fulfilling the company’s founding aim to drag Cobol, kicking and screaming, down onto Unix and personal computers. The company describes Object Cobol as the first true 32-bit Cobol compiler to support both Cobol and object-oriented Cobol programming. It has treated Object Cobol as an extension to Cobol syntax, but has kept these to a minimum, building the object technology into the compiler. It notes that Object Cobol supports mixed language applications, enabling programmers to create and debug applications made up of both Cobol and non-Cobol modules. Cobol and non-Cobol object-files can be linked together and can call each other seamlessly, enabling Cobol and other programs to be mixed together in the same application, says the compnay. Micro Focus says it is committed to object technology and to the principles of re-using code, real world modelling and code maintenance, all the things that are said to be object technology’s benefits. As most old mainframe applications are written in Cobol, Micro Focus says Object Cobol will provide programmers with a way of migrating their applications into an object environment.
Good performance
It has the maintainability associated with standard Cobol but because of its object orientation it can provide real world modelling that a procedural program could not. Object Cobol supports static and dynamic linking which, says Micro Focus, makes it very flexible but with good performance and as it has a 32-bit engine, it can take advantage of the 32-bit operating systems providing end users with immediate performance boosts. The company calculates that commercial applications incorporating large amounts of data and those that are calculation-intensive will typically realise performance improvements two to five times faster than the same application running as 16-bit code. Object Cobol supports OLE-2 Automation, thus making the process of linking mainframe-type applications to applications running on the desktop, such as Word or Excel, far easier; programmers do not have to worry about hooks between the Cobol and the programs, or software clashes on the desktop. Object Cobol can also be used as a scripting language to access methods in other OLE-2-enabled applications, enabling programmers to use Object Cobol where previously they had to use other languages. The Animator v2 development and debugging tool is included in Object Cobol, where it supports debugging of fully compiled Cobol programs, including those that directly access operating system application programming interfaces. This enables developers to debug applications as they would be supplied to end-users in a production environment. It combines the functions of editing, debugging and program analysis into a single visual environment. Object Cobol v3.3 for Windows NT and OS/2, priced at $1,500 will be available this quarter. Royalty-free run-time applications created with Object Cobol can be distributed fre e of charge.
