NetCOBOL for .NET V2.1 Enhances Agile IT Migration Solutions.SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Fujitsu Software Corporation --Latest release expands scope of NetCOBOL for .NET by simplifying application configuration, providing complete character encoding (character) character encoding - (Or "character encoding scheme") A mapping of binary values to code positions and back; generally a 1:1 (bijective) mapping. In the case of ASCII, this is generally a f(x)=x mapping: code point 65 maps to the byte value 65, and vice versa. solutions for international markets, and adding a Btrieve support option. Fujitsu Software Corporation today announced the V2.1 release of NetCOBOL for .NET, the hub of its Agile IT migration solutions and the leading COBOL COBOL: see programming language. COBOL in full Common Business-Oriented Language. High-level computer programming language, one of the first widely used languages and for many years the most popular language in the business community. compiler for the .NET Framework. The most significant enhancements in this release are: --Easier application configuration through use of a single, standard, XML XML in full Extensible Markup Language. Markup language developed to be a simplified and more structural version of SGML. It incorporates features of HTML (e.g., hypertext linking), but is designed to overcome some of HTML's limitations. application configuration file --Viable migration options for international customers who rely on characters outside the basic ASCII ASCII or American Standard Code for Information Interchange, a set of codes used to represent letters, numbers, a few symbols, and control characters. Originally designed for teletype operations, it has found wide application in computers. range --The option to use Btrieve for COBOL file I/O Input/Output operations such as open, close, read, write and append, all of which deal with standard disk or tape files. The term would be used to refer to regular file operations in contrast to low-level system I/O such as dealing with virtual memory pages or OS tables of contents. for those who want the features offered by Pervasive's Btrieve system Application Configuration Eased NetCOBOL for .NET V2.1 greatly eases application deployment by storing all runtime configuration information in standard .NET XML application configuration files. "Customers have indicated that ease of configuring applications is an important issue to them, so we have consolidated all runtime configuration information into the XML configuration file and provided a friendly tool for creating and editing the information - as well as providing a means of importing information from our earlier configuration files," said Basim Kadhim, chief architect for languages, Fujitsu Software Corporation "Our recently announced NeoKicks product has been able to take advantage of this standard approach to application configuration to provide simple setting of CICS (Customer Information Control System) A TP monitor from IBM that was originally developed to provide transaction processing for IBM mainframes. It controls the interaction between applications and users and lets programmers develop screen displays without transaction and file information." Until this release, NetCOBOL for .NET has used separate configuration files for runtime environment A configuration of hardware and software. It includes the CPU type, operating system and any runtime engines or system software required by a particular category of applications. See runtime engine. information, program entry point mappings, and SQL SQL in full Structured Query Language. Computer programming language used for retrieving records or parts of records in databases and performing various calculations before displaying the results. ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity) A database programming interface from Microsoft that provides a common language for Windows applications to access databases on a network. connection information. The new version retains compatibility with existing configuration files while providing the new, easier to use mechanism. International Character Encoding Solutions Improved In the international market many COBOL applications rely on characters outside the basic ASCII range, including accented characters (such as e u a) and the Euro currency sign (EUR EUR In currencies, this is the abbreviation for the Euro. Notes: The currency market, also known as the Foreign Exchange market, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US $1 trillion. ). Using ANSI (American National Standards Institute, New York, www.ansi.org) A membership organization founded in 1918 that coordinates the development of U.S. voluntary national standards in both the private and public sectors. It is the U.S. member body to ISO and IEC. Code Pages (ACP (Associate Computing Professional) The award for successful completion of an examination in computers offered by the ICCP. It is geared to newcomers in the computing field. For more information, visit www.iccp.org. ACP - Algebra of Communicating Processes ), which give different character mappings for different locales, these characters can be represented by single-byte encodings. In Unicode these characters are represented using multi-byte encodings. Such characters can therefore present challenges to companies migrating COBOL code to the .NET environment, which is primarily a Unicode platform. NetCOBOL for .NET V2.1 allows programs to be compiled to use either ACP or Unicode data by default and provides functions for converting between ACP and Unicode encodings. Maurizio Cortili, CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of Bizlogica, Italian distributors for NetCOBOL, explains, "For European applications in which there are many characters outside the basic ASCII range, moving to Unicode presents a really big challenge. Fujitsu Software is one of the few vendors that really understands the problems and is giving us a viable route to the .NET environment." "An added benefit of this support is that database performance for SQL databases that contain character data, as opposed to multi-byte national character data, is greatly increased as conversions in encoding can be avoided," Kadhim added. Btrieve File System Supported Pervasive Software's Btrieve file system is popular with many COBOL users who like its support of very large files, ability to include transaction commit and rollback functions and integration with the Pervasive.SQL product. Responding to customer requests, Fujitsu has added support for Btrieve to the V2.1 release in a manner that is compatible with the support in other NetCOBOL products. Other Useful Enhancements NetCOBOL for .NET V2.1 also brings: --A wizard for generating program prototypes for NetCOBOL for Windows program - program prototypes are a .NET device required when communicating with unmanaged (non-.NET) code such as that created by NetCOBOL for Windows. The wizard takes all the effort out of creating the prototypes as it extracts interface definition information from information generated by the NetCOBOL for Windows compiler. --A runtime option to check for mismatching encoding systems in data shared between programs using COBOL's external data feature. --Productivity enhancements such as alphabetical arrangement of source files in solution explorer and a menu selection to set the start page on Web projects. Commenting on the release Ron Langer, senior director languages group, Fujitsu Software Corporation, said, "This release of NetCOBOL for .NET widens the audience to which it applies and makes it more flexible for existing customers. As with earlier NetCOBOL for .NET releases we are responding to the requests we are hearing in the marketplace, continuing to deliver new releases in as quick a cycle as is reasonable while upholding our high stability standards." For more information please visit www.netcobol.com. About Fujitsu Software Corporation Fujitsu Software Corporation, based in Sunnyvale, California, is part of the Fujitsu Limited (TSE See Tokyo Stock Exchange. TSE 1. See Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE). 2. See Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE). :6702) family. The wholly owned subsidiary Wholly Owned Subsidiary A subsidiary whose parent company owns 100% of its common stock. Notes: In other words, the parent company owns the company outright and there are no minority owners. delivers one of the world's broadest lines of application infrastructure software products, including the Interstage(R) Suite and NetCOBOL(R). Fujitsu Software Corporation leverages Fujitsu's international scope and expertise in developing and providing information technology solutions, including more than 4,000 software developers worldwide. To learn more about Fujitsu Software Corporation, visit www.fsw.fujitsu.com. Copyright 2004 Fujitsu Software Corporation. Fujitsu, the Fujitsu Symbol Mark, and Interstage are registered trademarks of Fujitsu Limited. NetCOBOL is a registered trademark of Fujitsu Software Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
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