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1996-09-24
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VisualAge for COBOL for OS/2 Version 1.2 Refreshed with New Features and Windows 95 and Windows NT Support
Announced on September 24, 1996
SOFTWARE Announcement 296-363
At a Glance
VisualAge for COBOL for OS/2 Version 1.2:
o Extends IBM COBOL to the popular Windows 95 and NT platforms
o Adds a program understanding tool that helps you visually analyze
and understand your COBOL applications
o Adds a remote edit/compile/debug function that lets you work with
your host applications from your OS/2 workstation
o Adds ODBC support that provides expanded access to databases
-----------------------------------------
For ordering, contact:
Your IBM representative, an IBM Authorized
Business Partner, or IBM DIRECT at
800-IBM-CALL Reference: SE005
Overview
IBM VisualAge(TM) for COBOL for OS/2(R) Version 1.2 has been enhanced
with new features, including IBM COBOL support for Windows 95+ and
Windows NT. These enhancements make VisualAge for COBOL an even more
powerful choice for your COBOL application development needs.
VisualAge for COBOL, Standard for OS/2 has been refreshed to include:
o Remote edit/compile/debug capability that allows you to work with
your host applications from your OS/2 workstation
o Support for Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) that provides you
access to data from a variety of databases and file systems
o IBM COBOL support for Windows 95 and Windows NT provides an IBM
COBOL application development environment on Windows 95 and
Windows NT that includes a 32-bit compiler, run-time, editor,
debug tool, and performance analyzer
VisualAge for COBOL, Professional for OS/2 includes all of the new
features in the Standard edition, plus the Redeveloper Program
Understanding tool that enables you to easily understand and analyze
complex COBOL software applications on OS/2.
With VisualAge for COBOL for OS/2, you can use your existing COBOL
code to upgrade your applications on many platforms and with the
newest technologies. This means you can save development costs and
increase productivity because of the minimal need to retrain your
employees. By implementing these new technologies, you can give your
business a competitive edge in your marketplace heading into the year
2000 and beyond.
Intended Customers
COBOL developers.
Key Prerequisites
o VisualAge for COBOL for OS/2 Version 1.2 can be used with
OS/2 Warp Version 3 or later.
o IBM COBOL support for Windows 95 and Windows NT can be used with
Microsoft+ Windows 95 or Windows NT 3.51.
Price
Unaffected by this announcement.
Planned Availability Date
September 30, 1996
DESCRIPTION
VisualAge for COBOL, Standard Version 1.2 Refresh
VisualAge for COBOL, Standard for OS/2 includes the compiler,
run-time, visual builder, debug tool, LPEX editor, performance
analyzer, and assistant tools. Along with a roll-up of all available
fixes, the following new function has been added in this refresh:
Remote Edit/Compile/Debug: The remote edit/compile/debug function
lets you work with your host (MVS(R) or OS/390(TM)) applications from
your OS/2 workstation. This function provides a seamless workstation
development environment for the development of host programs. Files
are directly loaded from the host to the workstation without the need
for a workstation naming convention and mapping. Remote
edit/compile/debug is integrated with workstation components such as
LPEX and Workframe. Remote debugging features the use of a graphical
user interface when interacting with the host debug tool.
Communications to the host is via the Advanced Program-to-Program
Communication (APPC) protocol.
ODBC Support: VisualAge for COBOL for OS/2 supports native imbedded
SQL statements for Oracle and Sybase. This refresh also adds Open
Database Connectivity (ODBC) support that provides the capability to
access data from a variety of databases and file systems that support
the ODBC interface.
IBM COBOL Support for Windows 95 and Windows NT: IBM COBOL support
for Windows 95 and Windows NT provides you with a 32-bit
direct-to-SOM(TM)-based, object-oriented compiler and run-time for
the Windows 95 and Windows NT operating systems. IBM COBOL support
for Windows 95 and Windows NT also includes a set of
high-productivity, Windows-based tools for the development of
applications targeting Windows 95 and NT execution systems -- IBM
WorkFrame, the LPEX editor, a debug tool, and performance analyzer.
These Windows-based tools (LPEX, debug tool, and performance
analyzer) contain the same functionality as the OS/2-based tools.
WorkFrame provides integration for the included components.
WorkFrame is a configurable, project-oriented application development
environment. When used as the integration medium for application
development tools, the configurable WorkFrame increases the
effectiveness of these tools as agents for enhancing user
productivity. WorkFrame organizes the programmer's Workplace(TM) by
grouping files into logical units or projects.
The LPEX editor is a language-sensitive color editor that supports
COBOL (as well as PL/I, C/C++, REXX, and JCL). The editor can be
used to create and edit many types of text files, including program
source and documentation. By automatically parsing COBOL source
code, LPEX distinguishes between language constructs. For instance,
language keywords, comments, string literals, and numbers are
displayed using distinctive fonts and colors. Developers can quickly
find items they are looking for in their source code.
The debug tool provides source-level debugging built around a set of
core functions designed to let users quickly and efficiently control
execution, and analyze data.
The performance analyzer is a tool that can help users understand and
improve the behavior of their programs. The performance analyzer
traces the execution of a program and creates a trace file. The
trace file contains data that can be displayed in diagrams. The
diagrams can assist the user with performance tuning, examining
occurrences that produce faults; and in general, understand what
happens when a program runs.
IBM COBOL support for Windows 95 and Windows NT is designed to
provide the capability to write applications that support local and
remote access to data including:
o Record-oriented local file access through standard COBOL I/O
statements
o DB2(R) data access using DB2 for Windows 95 or DB2 for Windows NT,
including DB2 SQL co-processor support
o Oracle and Sybase data via native imbedded SQL statements
o Data from a variety of databases and file systems that support the
ODBC interface
VisualAge for COBOL, Professional Version 1.2 Refresh
Along with a roll-up of all available fixes, the Redeveloper Program
Understanding tool has been added in this refresh to VisualAge for
COBOL, Professional for OS/2 Version 1.2. The Program Understanding
tool had been previously available on the Internet as a Beta release.
This refresh includes the generally available version of the tool.
VisualAge for COBOL, Professional for OS/2 includes all of the
features of the Standard edition and adds the Redeveloper tools on
OS/2. The VisualAge for COBOL Redeveloper tools provide a means for
analyzing and maintaining COBOL programs and applications. With the
Redeveloper tools, you can re-engineer existing programs to produce a
better understood and documented application. When used with the
other components of VisualAge for COBOL, it aids in the
understanding, maintenance, and reuse of your existing inventory of
COBOL code, and in editing, compiling, and debugging new and existing
applications. There are three Redeveloper tools:
o Application Understanding
o Program Conversion and Structuring
o Program Understanding
The analysis and maintenance process generally begins with an
evaluation of your applications to find the most suitable choices for
redevelopment. You can use the Application Understanding tool to
identify good redevelopment candidates and to predict the impact of
the changes you might want to make.
Your maintenance work might involve upgrading from older COBOL
versions to the ANSI 85 standard. The Program Conversion and
Structuring tool automates much of the upgrade process by converting
most of the COBOL syntax for you. You may also want to structure an
application because years of maintenance might have obscured whatever
structure the code originally had. The Program Conversion and
Structuring tool helps you clean up code and identify dead code,
which reduces an application's size and makes the code easier to
maintain. You can structure your code either before or after
converting it. The tool gives recommendations for structure changes.
The tool can structure the program for you, or you can do it
yourself.
You can then use the Program Understanding tool's analysis functions
to analyze your programs. You can locate data flow in and between
programs in executable units and see a program's relative complexity.
Redeveloper Program Understanding: The Program Understanding tool
helps you understand complex COBOL software applications. You can
analyze and extract information about an entire application and
examine it on the workstation using an OS/2 graphical user interface
to show both graphical and textual views of the physical design of
the application.
Graphically, you can explore various views of the physical design of
the application and its programs. At the highest level, you can
discover the relationships between the programs that compose the
entire application. A mid-level view displays the flow of control
within a program, including nested subprograms, paragraphs, and
sections. At the lowest level, you can examine the internal control
flow of each program.
At any time, you can reduce the scope of your analysis by restricting
the analysis to only areas of interest to you.
You can also link views. A linked view depicts the association
between the compiled source code and the graphical control flow
representations of the program.
Textually, you can view hypertext cross-reference information that
details program usage, data structures, symbol usage, and copylib
usage. You can use the expanded source code browser view as a
launching pad for navigation within and across programs.
You can request dataflow analysis on any user-defined variable at any
point in the PROCEDURE DIVISION of a program. You can also view
statements that use the current value of the selected variable.
Program Understanding technology is designed to:
o Provide complete user-defined high-, medium-, and low-level
information about large-scale software applications
o Provide dataflow analysis
o Provide program slicing to view business logic
o Reduce the time application programmers need to become familiar
with large-scale applications
o Facilitate the migration of applications to the latest technology,
such as client/server computing
o Reduce errors that occur when maintenance tasks are performed
manually on complex applications
o Improve the productivity of software maintenance programmers
Help with the Year 2000 Problem
VisualAge for COBOL can help you with the year 2000 problem.
VisualAge for COBOL gives you the tools to help you identify, locate,
and understand the year 2000 problems in your existing code.
VisualAge for COBOL also provides intrinsic functions to help correct
the problem in any existing code and to help avoid the problem in any
new code. You can use VisualAge for COBOL to analyze your JCL for
your batch applications to identify possible modules and data sets
that might be impacted. Having identified potential problems in your
modules, you can use VisualAge for COBOL to help locate, understand,
and fix these problems in your code. To simplify the implementation
of these changes, you can use VisualAge for COBOL to convert programs
written in older levels of COBOL to newer levels of COBOL, and you
can structure previously unstructured programs.
PRODUCT POSITIONING
COBOL customers who thought they would need to look to other
languages as their only option in creating powerful client/server
applications with object technology, can now be assured that they can
remain with IBM COBOL and still take advantage of these new
technologies. Customers can take advantage of the existing skill
base in their organizations, preserve the valuable program base they
have built up, and still move aggressively to utilize workstations in
mission-critical applications.
IBM's COBOL family of products reaches across multiple workstation
and host environments with consistent language implementation and
support for many databases. IBM COBOL now has offerings on
workstation and host environments such as OS/390, MVS, VM, VSE,
OS/400(R), OS/2, AIX(R), and Windows 95 and Windows NT. Support is
now included for IBM's premier DB2 and IMS(TM) database products as
well as native support for Oracle and Sybase. ODBC support provides
access to data from a variety of databases that support the ODBC
interface. Object-oriented COBOL support is included in the OS/390,
MVS, OS/2, AIX, Windows 95 and Windows NT products.
IBM's object-oriented COBOL products combine the technical and
practical advantages of the COBOL language with the benefits of
object-oriented programming. The fact that these products extend the
COBOL language gives them four distinct advantages over other
object-oriented programming languages:
o The ability to readily interface to, and extend, existing IBM
COBOL applications.
o An abundance of developers with COBOL programming skills.
o The natural synergy of COBOL, transaction processing and database
access via object-oriented programming, provides a compelling
reason to use IBM's object-oriented COBOL offerings.
o The object-oriented features are a natural extension of COBOL. It
will be easier for COBOL developers to get started with
object-oriented COBOL while using the same robust COBOL
development environment they have grown to depend on.
Object-oriented application development can begin in a gradual manner
without the need to retrain programmers and undertake a new language
not oriented to business applications. IBM supports this move with
object-oriented language extensions and compatible host and
workstation environments that support the overall IBM direction for
object-oriented programming and the evolving COBOL standards.
Customers will get all this with the performance and support
customers have come to expect from IBM COBOL.
STATEMENT OF GENERAL DIRECTION
IBM intends to provide additional Windows-based development tools in
the VisualAge for COBOL product, including the VisualAge family GUI
builder, a data assistant tool, and a transaction assistant tool.
TECHNICAL INFORMATION
Software Requirements: The following software requirements are in
addition to those listed in the previous VisualAge for COBOL for
OS/2 Version 1.2 announcement. Refer to Software Announcement
296-260, dated July 23, 1996, for those requirements.
o To use IBM COBOL for Windows 95 and Windows NT, one of the
following:
- Microsoft Windows 95
- Microsoft Windows NT 3.51
o To use remote edit/compile/debug between your host (MVS or OS/390)
and OS/2:
- IBM COBOL for MVS & VM Full Function Release 2 or later
- IBM Communications Manager/2 Version 1.11 or later
o To use DB2 applications on Windows, one of the following:
- DB2 for Windows 95 and Windows NT Version 2.1.1 at service
level 8090 plus FixPak 8110 (which contains APAR JR08999)
- DB2 SDK for Windows 95 and Windows NT Version 2.1.1 at service
level 8090 plus FixPak 8110 (which contains APAR JR08999)
- Database Server for Windows NT Version 4 plus FixPak 8112
(which contains APAR JR08999)
o To use Oracle applications:
- Oracle7 or later
o To use Sybase applications:
- Sybase System 10 or later
Compatibility: VisualAge for COBOL for OS/2 Version 1.2 is source
compatible with IBM COBOL Set for AIX programs and IBM COBOL for MVS
& VM programs, except for data device specifications and callable
services. Also, VisualAge for COBOL for OS/2 Version 1.2 is ANSI 85
source compatible (that is, no object-oriented extensions) with IBM
COBOL for VSE programs and IBM ILE COBOL for OS/400 programs, except
for data device specifications and callable services.
VisualAge for COBOL for OS/2 Version 1.2 is year 2000 compliant.
Limitations
o Free format COBOL source statements are not supported.
o Oracle and Sybase SQL statements cannot be used from Methods.
Planning Information
Users may run their applications developed with IBM VisualAge for
COBOL for OS/2 on other OS/2 and Windows systems with no additional
charge. A list of the required run-time modules and the conditions
for their redistribution are included in the product License
Information.
ORDERING INFORMATION
Effective September 30, 1996, new VisualAge for COBOL Version 1.2
program packages will contain the refreshed product. All existing
VisualAge for COBOL for OS/2 Version 1.2 customers who have Upgrade
Protection, will be automatically sent the refreshed product. The
refreshed package will contain a banner on the front which contains
the words "Includes free COBOL compiler for Windows 95 and Windows
NT."
Refer to Software Announcement 296-260, dated July 23, 1996, for
information on ordering VisualAge for COBOL for OS/2 Version 1.2.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
The terms and conditions for IBM VisualAge for COBOL for OS/2
Version 1.2, as previously announced (refer to Software Announcement
296-260, dated July 23, 1996), licensed under the IBM International
Program License Agreement, are unaffected by this announcement.
CHARGES
Contact your IBM representative for charges information for this
announcement.
CALL NOW TO ORDER
To order, contact IBM Direct, your local IBM representative, or your
IBM Authorized Business Partner.
IBM Direct, our national direct marketing organization, can also
arrange to put your name on the mailing list for catalogs of IBM
products.
Phone: 800-IBM-CALL
Fax: 800-2IBM-FAX
Internet: ibm_direct@vnet.ibm.com
Mail: IBM Direct
Dept. SE005
P.O. Box 16848
Atlanta, GA 30321-0848
Reference: SE005
To identify your local IBM Authorized Business Partner or IBM
representative, call 800-IBM-4YOU.
Note: Shipments will begin after the planned availability date.
(TM) Trademark of International Business Machines Corporation in the
United States or other countries or both.
(R) Registered trademark of International Business Machines
Corporation in the United States or other countries or both.
+ Registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation
Other trademarks and registered trademarks are the properties
of their respective owners.