Managing PowerCOBOL (and NetCOBOL) projects


PRIMA's Fujitsu project manager

Fujitsu has been providing excellent COBOL compilers for workstation COBOL development for over 20 years now. They were quick to provide a COBOL compiler that supports Object Orientation, and have acquired a well-deserved reputation for the quality of their products.

However, outside Japan they have franchised their COBOL involvement and it is no longer a focus of their company.

Nevertheless, there is a wide user base for Fujitsu COBOL (both PowerCOBOL and NetCOBOL, and more recently, NetCOBOL for .Net, a CIL generating, fully object oriented COBOL compiler for .Net.)

PRIMA is more interested in salvaging legacy COBOL and moving to development in newer .Net languages, so we have not invested in NetCOBOL for .Net, ourselves.

If you use our Migration Tools, there is no need to buy an expensive .Net COBOL compiler (Fujitsu's or anybody else's...), provided what you have already supports OO COBOL. (Both PowerCOBOL and NetCOBOL fully support OO COBOL, and you can distribute applications developed with these compilers without having to pay a Runtime Licensing fee.)

PRIMA's Fujitsu Projects Management tool is aimed at sites who have a number of Fujitsu PowerCOBOL and/or NetCOBOL projects as the basis of their software. New releases of the software for distribution to clients will require recompiling some or all of these projects. Our tool makes this very easy because it lets you batch compile projects just by checking a list, which the tool prepares by recursing through the folder structure you point it at, showing where your projects are stored.

Here are some of the reasons you might find this tool useful:

* - Allows you to open and work in projects as well as batch compile them, from a single console.
* - Allows you to manipulate sets and subsets of projects by easy browsing and checklist.
* - Easily configured, with configuration remembered automatically when you change it. Specific configurations can be stored and retrieved as well.
* - Organize projects into folders based on applications, and compile them all or only some of them.
* - Automatically builds changed components for all selected projects, with ability to specify BUILD or REBUILD as temporary global override.
* - Produces batch compile summaries as a single listing or individually for each project compiled.
* - NetCOBOL and PowerCOBOL projects can share the same folder without overwriting each other's files or listings.
* - The batch processing is multithreaded so that listings can be browsed while batch processing goes on.
* - It is possible to save and load settings for each instance of the tool. Multiple instances mean large batch runs can be processed by instances of the tool running concurrently.
* - Allows ERRORS ONLY reporting, so that error projects can be easily identified and dealt with.
* - Batch compile summaries can be edited with your choice of Editor, for filing with Release documentation.
* - Shows clearly and immediately on screen what succeeded and what failed, as projects are run. Failed projects can be looked at immediately without interrupting the batch flow.

If you would like more information or to organize a trial of the tool, please click here...

Settings