Leading Cobol tools vendor Micro Focus has signed up for
Microsoft's Visual Studio .net integration partner program.
The new agreement should make it easier to get old or new Cobol
applications to run in Microsoft's .net development environment in
future.
Micro Focus has committed to extend its Net Express tool, which
allows Cobol developers to write applications for the Windows,
Linux and Unix operating systems, to Microsoft's .net
environment.
"Micro Focus Cobol will become a first-class citizen in the .net
framework, in the way that C# or Visual Basic might be," said Tony
Hill, chief executive of Micro Focus. Hill said his company is
making a 'significant investment,' which he declined to specify,
because customers "are telling us that they see .net as part of
their future."
John Billman, Net Express product manager, said Micro Focus had to
adapt its Cobol compiler to translate Cobol code into the Microsoft
Intermediate Language that can be executed by the .net framework's
Common Language Runtime.
That effort will have two important consequences for developers.
Users should be able to move all of their business logic written in
Cobol and significant portions of their other Cobol code directly
to the .net environment without the need to rewrite the code, so
long as they have not targeted any special or proprietary
application programming interfaces, Billman said.
Users will also gain access to the .net framework's many new class
libraries, including the Windows and Web forms that can be used to
create user interfaces, said Dan Hay, a lead product manager in
Microsoft's Visual Studio enterprise tools division.
Users working inside Microsoft's Visual Studio .net tool will be
able to create an application project using Micro Focus Cobol or
work with existing legacy code, Hay said. An early-adopter program
for .net support in Net Express will start in December. The final
version of the tool, which will sell for $3,700 (£2,377) per seat,
is expected next June.
Hay said Microsoft will probably work out an arrangement whereby
Micro Focus can sell Visual Studio to its customers along with the
Net Express product.
The Micro Focus product will not be the first tool targeting Cobol
developers. Earlier this year, Fujitsu Software released its
NetCobol for .net tool, which also compiles Cobol code to run on
Windows.
Hay said Micro Focus supports a broader range of platforms and has
a larger installed base than Fujitsu.