Using Eclipse for COBOL Development

You can create, debug and run COBOL applications on your local machine or on a remote server. You use Eclipse features such as the COBOL and Remote Systems Explorer perspectives within the IDE to background check syntax as well as build and debug your COBOL programs. As in other Micro Focus products, you use COBOL-specific projects to aid your everyday development activities within the IDE. This provides familiar functionality for editing, compiling, and debugging, complete with comprehensive COBOL Help.

The features of the COBOL development system include:

Note: When working with local SQL applications on UNIX, ensure the RDBMS environment is set before you start Eclipse. Refer to your RDBMS vendor's documentation for details.

Developing applications remotely

When you develop COBOL remote applications, you use a remote server running Visual COBOL Development Hub to host your source code, and use the Eclipse IDE on your local machine as the development interface.

Working with a remote machine allows you to develop and host applications on UNIX and Linux servers while using a Windows or Linux hosted Eclipse IDE. In this scenario, all source code is maintained on the remote server. In addition, no actual build processing occurs on the machine hosting the Eclipse IDE. Instead, all processing tasks including editing, compilation and debugging are performed on the remote server. Copying files between the local client and the remote server using FTP for example, is not required.