Micro Focus intros Visual COBOL R3 aimed at developers

BANGALORE, INDIA: Micro Focus today launched Visual COBOL R3, which gives developers the freedom to extend COBOL to the latest platforms using a variety of application development environments, without having to rewrite code.

"Visual COBOL is set to be the most advanced version of the COBOL development platform in existence, combining the heritage of a language that has defined business computing for over 50 years with the latest advancements in computing, such as object-oriented architecture and the ability to integrate with the latest languages, applications and operating systems," said Akshay Aggarwal, Micro Focus Country General Manager, India.

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Aggarwal added, "Visual COBOL R3 offers to build applications with true portability from Windows & .NET to Unix, Linux, JVM and the cloud. I am confident that this product will be an asset to businesses wanting to extend and integrate existing applications to meet new emerging business needs.”

“There is an ongoing shift towards examining the impact and specific role of the chosen language in conjunction with selecting a platform,” said Mark Driver, Research Vice President of Gartner Research.

“Taking COBOL to new platforms like .NET, JVM or the cloud supports a growing trend toward developers choosing the best language for the job, independent of the choice of best deployment platform to use,” Driver added.

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Visual COBOL R3 is the first solution to translate the COBOL language directly to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), allowing developers to create COBOL applications for the JVM framework and seamlessly integrate with Java, added the release.

Stuart McGill, CTO, Micro Focus said, “As today’s enterprises continue to expand into new markets, the need to introduce innovative products, reduce time to market and increase efficiency is more critical than ever.”

McGill added, “Visual COBOL R3 combines the productivity and innovation of development environments with COBOL’s business-tested performance. New recruits to COBOL can learn it in hours, not days, helping them extend the life of business-critical applications and develop new, high-powered applications using COBOL."

Visual COBOL R3 also allows developers to deploy the same COBOL code on .NET and the Microsoft Azure platform, integration with Visual Studio 2010 and Eclipse IDE, enhancements to the COBOL language, with C# and Java-like constructs, making it easier to learn for both new and existing COBOL users.

Visual COBOL R3 also introduces the Visual COBOL Development Hub, a productive development tool for remote Linux and Unix servers, added the release.