Re: Cobol for Visual sutdio



"Michael Wojcik" <mwojcik@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:gectep0d99@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Pete Dashwood wrote:

I'm impressed that the list you gave is the same one (almost) that I gave
you. Obviously, MicroFocus .NET COBOL has come a long way since the first
implementations.

Yes, I think it has. The optional syntax has been greatly streamlined,
which helps a lot.

Of your list, LINQ and the lambda operator (and thus dynamic closures)
are still missing from .NET COBOL. You made a good case for LINQ, and
lambda would be nice. (I have some notes somewhere on a functional OO
COBOL that would include a lambda operator, first-class closures, etc.
Just a hobby project.)

I'm not sure if .NET COBOL supports covariance and contravariance of
delegates, either. (I haven't tried it, and the COBOL delegate samples
I looked at all have exactly-matching signatures.)

And yes, of course, COBOL has significant additional cost. There are
different economic constraints, but the result is that the customer
has to consider whether it's worth paying for COBOL.

C# is the flagship .NET language (as it should be), so the others will
always be playing catch-up. And I don't expect people to defect from
C# to COBOL. I'm really just interested in clarifying the status of
COBOL in .NET, so that someone choosing between the languages has a
clear picture.

I think you did a very good job. I certainly learned somethng about where MF
COBOL for .NET is at.

I'd still like someone with MF access to comment on support for COM (not
necessarily COM+; I'd agree that WCF looks like the way to go on that...).

Obviously, within my Migration model, components are essential for
leveraging existing COBOL functionality, and I see the refactoring as being
quite labour intensive. Wrapping existing functionality as COM components
(see the COBOL structure analysis tool) is pretty easy in the Fujitsu
environment.

Fujitsu support for COM is excellent and has been for years now. They
provide a COM base class and a COM exception handling class, which can be
inherited into your own code and avoid the need for handling COM marshaling,
interfacing, and low-level wrappings. Their COM base class automatically
generates GET and SET for COBOL PROPERTIES and provides a CREATE-OBJECT
method (rather than NEW, which is in the base...) for instantiating COM
server connections in a client.

As the imminent release of C# (version 4) is improving COM interaction, it
looks like COM is still relevant, at least in the MicroSoft arena.

I'd like to know what Micro Focus offers in this area.

Can you comment, please, Michael?

Pete.
--
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Cobol for Visual sutdio
    ... MicroFocus .NET COBOL has come a long way since the first ... COBOL that would include a lambda operator, first-class closures, etc. ... C# is the flagship .NET language, ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: COBOL: Its Everywhere... but going Nowhere....
    ... Especially since the market doesn't seem to be there to buy even OO ... COBOL, much less .NET COBOL when there are cheaper alternatives ... We're selling both native-mode OO COBOL and .Net COBOL, ... Mainframe emulation for .Net COBOL is a much bigger market, ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: Why COBOL is losing the POWER struggle
    ... In C# I can use a Regular Expression, code 3 lines and get on with more ... And in .NET COBOL, you can do exactly the same, since ... degenerate - they're all fixed strings with no regex operators - ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: Why COBOL is losing the POWER struggle
    ... And in .NET COBOL, you can do exactly the same, since ... degenerate - they're all fixed strings with no regex operators - ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: Regular Expressions and Standard COBOL (was Re: Use of Class conditions in COBOL)
    ... I think it is useful to have Regular Expressions ... made part of the COBOL language standard. ... standard (indeed, any programming language standard) ... there is functionality that is implementor-defined; ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)