Differences between Visual COBOL and Server Express

You can upgrade COBOL applications that were developed in Server Express to Visual COBOL without the need to change their code.

All references to Net Express and Server Express in this guide relate to the variants of those products that provided Mainframe Subsystem Support as part of the Studio Enterprise Edition bundle.

This guide lists the differences between Net Express, Server Express and Visual COBOL in the following areas:

Compiling and building
You use the command line to build your applications as you did in the previous Micro Focus products.
Run-time systems
There are some differences between the run-time systems supplied with Visual COBOL and those supplied with Server Express. This, however, will not affect your existing applications and they will continue to run under Visual COBOL - you only need to recompile the applications from the source code with Visual COBOL.
Run-time system technologies
Some technologies behave differently and require some upgrade work.
Restrictions and unsupported features
Some features of Server Express are not available in Visual COBOL.
Editing and debugging
Much of the Server Express functionality for editing and debugging is available in Visual COBOL.