Visual COBOL enables you to develop COBOL applications within Microsoft Visual Studio. You use the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) to edit, compile and debug COBOL applications. The IDE provides all the functionality to manage projects and build applications.
You can develop COBOL applications that run as .NET managed code in the .NET environment. You can also develop and compile applications to native COBOL code, as .exe or .dll. You then deploy and further debug the application under COBOL Server.
.NET code and native code can interoperate within the same application, enabling you to exploit existing COBOL in the .NET environment.
COBOL Server is a companion to Visual COBOL. COBOL Server provides the run-time environment for running COBOL applications. .NET applications also require the Microsoft .NET Framework to be installed and this is available from the Microsoft Web site.