Micro Focus Net Express 5.0
in [Cobol]
|
From: Frank Swarbrick on 2 Dec 2006 12:11 After much talk about OO COBOL, as it were, I finally decided I would spend a bit of money to try it out. I bought Micro Focus Net Express 5.0 "University Edition". Technically, I got "Net Express 5.0 University Edition and Visual Studio* Software and Book Shipment Non-Student". This includes: Micro Focus Net Express 5.0 Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 the book "COBOL and .NET, second edition" Total cost: $194.00 All in all not too bad, I guess. Especially considering that buying just Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition directly from Microsoft costs $299! Not sure how MF swung that deal. :-) Anyway, I've only had it a few days and I'm fairly happy. Documentation could be better. The first few days I've been working with VS and the ..NET environment, because I was already familiar with it from using Visual C# Express Edition and Visual C++ Express Edition. Haven't come upon any real issues there that I can think of at the moment. I am now looking just at the Net Express IDE, etc. Pretty blah IDE compared to VS. Very 1995. Ah well. I just tried the example "pclass.app" in the ISO2002 examples directory. I've found two errors so far! One, the source file "Student.cbl" was not included in the app project. Two, the "finalize" method of the String class in "String.cbl" has a syntax error. It has exit program When it should have exit method. After fixing those two things I got it to compile. Haven't even run it yet. But it sure makes me leery of their quality control process! I wonder what else I'll run into. What would be the best way for me to report these (and other?) issues? Website? Email? One other thing I noticed, by accident actually, is a few nice extensions to COBOL2002. While coding an INVOKE statement I accidentally typed: Invoke o::"mymethod" Instead of Invoke o "mymethod" To my surprise it compiled and worked with no problem. Turns out this is an MF extension. It actually allows you to code something like Invoke o::"mymethod"(parm1, parm2) Instead of Invoke o "mymethod" using by value parm1 parm2 While I understand that the second, standard way is more "Cobolish", I must say I actually prefer the MF way. It's less verbose and, to my mind (being familiar with other OO languages such as C++, Java and C#) easier to read. I haven't been able to actually find reference to this extension in the actual MF documentation, but it is referred to on page 122 of the "COBOL and .NET" book. Additionally, one can refer to properties in the same manner. Let's say I have a class with a working-storage item defined as: 01 myproperty pic x(10) property. I can refer to it as follows: move "abcd" to o::"myproperty" display o::"myproperty" With standard COBOL 2002 I would do this: move "abcd" to mypropery of o display myproperty of o But that's not all. I also need to have repository. property myproperty. In the Environment Division. I believe this is because using the 2002 standard myproperty is an identifier, and therefore must be "declared" before it can be used. While with the MF extension myproperty is simply a literal, and therefore needs no "declaration". Or something like that. Anyway, again, the MF way seems more "natural", if less "Cobolish". Finally, I also like that MF allows the forgoing of the need to specify "object reference" when declaring, um, an object reference. Standard COBOL example: 01 o OBJECT REFERENCE MyClass. MF allows: 01 o MyClass. Much less typing, perfectly readable, and much more like other OO languages. Anyway, those are my thoughts thus far. Anyone else have NE 5.0? I'm sure I'll have many more comments in the upcoming weeks... Frank
From: Simon Tobias on 4 Dec 2006 09:05 Hi Frank <report snipped> > What would be the best way for me to report these (and other?) issues? > Website? Email? Thanks for taking the time to post your findings. I'd suggest that you sign up for free at the Micro Focus Forum accessible from http://www.cobolportal.com/ , where you'll find other users as well as Micro Focus staff, for sharing findings and getting questions answered. There's a specific board on there for the University Edition of Net Express. Regards, SimonT.
From: Frank Swarbrick on 4 Dec 2006 20:20 Will do. Thanks, Simon! Frank >>> Simon Tobias<Simon.Tobias(a)nospam.microfocus.com> 12/04/06 7:05 AM >>> Hi Frank <report snipped> > What would be the best way for me to report these (and other?) issues? > Website? Email? Thanks for taking the time to post your findings. I'd suggest that you sign up for free at the Micro Focus Forum accessible from http://www.cobolportal.com/ , where you'll find other users as well as Micro Focus staff, for sharing findings and getting questions answered. There's a specific board on there for the University Edition of Net Express. Regards, SimonT.
|
Pages: 1 Prev: RM/COBOL 6.61.00 for Linux and terminfo Next: Information about direct cobol abort codes |