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Sunnyvale,
September 16, 2004 –
Fujitsu Software Corporation today announced the V2.1 release of
NetCOBOL for .NET, the hub of its Agile IT migration solutions and
the leading COBOL compiler for the .NET Framework. The most significant
enhancements in this release are:
- Easier application configuration through use of a single, standard,
XML application configuration file
- Viable migration options for international customers who rely
on characters outside the basic ASCII range
- The option to use Btrieve for COBOL file I/O for those who want
the features offered by Pervasive's Btrieve system
Application Configuration Eased
NetCOBOL for .NET V2.1 greatly eases application deployment by storing all runtime configuration
information in standard .NET XML application configuration files.
"Customers have indicated that ease of configuring applications is an important issue to them, so we have
consolidated all runtime configuration information into the XML configuration file and provided a friendly
tool for creating and editing the information - as well as providing a means of importing information from
our earlier configuration files," said Basim Kadhim, chief architect for languages, Fujitsu Software
Corporation "Our recently announced NeoKicks product has been able to take advantage of this standard
approach to application configuration to provide simple setting of CICS transaction and file information."
Until this release, NetCOBOL for .NET has used separate configuration files for runtime environment
information, program entry point mappings, and SQL ODBC connection information. The new version retains
compatibility with existing configuration files while providing the new, easier to use mechanism.
International Character Encoding Solutions Improved
In the international market many COBOL applications rely on characters outside the basic ASCII range,
including accented characters (such as é ü â) and the Euro currency sign (€). Using ANSI Code Pages (ACP),
which give different character mappings for different locales, these characters can be represented by
single-byte encodings. In Unicode these characters are represented using multi-byte encodings. Such
characters can therefore present challenges to companies migrating COBOL code to the .NET environment,
which is primarily a Unicode platform.
NetCOBOL for .NET V2.1 allows programs to be compiled to use either ACP or Unicode data by default and
provides functions for converting between ACP and Unicode encodings.
Maurizio Cortili, CEO of Bizlogica, Italian distributors for NetCOBOL, explains, "For European
applications in which there are many characters outside the basic ASCII range, moving to Unicode
presents a really big challenge. Fujitsu Software is one of the few vendors that really understands the
problems and is giving us a viable route to the .NET environment."
"An added benefit of this support is that database performance for SQL databases that contain character
data, as opposed to multi-byte national character data, is greatly increased as conversions in encoding
can be avoided," Kadhim added.
Btrieve File System Supported
Pervasive Software's Btrieve file system is popular with many COBOL users who like its support of very
large files, ability to include transaction commit and rollback functions and integration with the
Pervasive.SQL product. Responding to customer requests, Fujitsu has added support for Btrieve to the V2.1
release in a manner that is compatible with the support in other NetCOBOL products.
Other Useful Enhancements
NetCOBOL for .NET V2.1 also brings:
- A wizard for generating program prototypes for NetCOBOL for Windows program - program prototypes
are a .NET device required when communicating with unmanaged (non-.NET) code such as that created by
NetCOBOL for Windows. The wizard takes all the effort out of creating the prototypes as it extracts
interface definition information from information generated by the NetCOBOL for Windows compiler.
- A runtime option to check for mismatching encoding systems in data shared between programs using
COBOL's external data feature.
- Productivity enhancements such as alphabetical arrangement of source files in solution explorer
and a menu selection to set the start page on Web projects.
Commenting on the release Ron Langer, senior director languages group, Fujitsu Software Corporation,
said, "This release of NetCOBOL for .NET widens the audience to which it applies and makes it more
flexible for existing customers. As with earlier NetCOBOL for .NET releases we are responding to the
requests we are hearing in the marketplace, continuing to deliver new releases in as quick a cycle as
is reasonable while upholding our high stability standards."
For more information
please visit www.netcobol.com.
About
Fujitsu Software Corporation
Fujitsu Software Corporation, based in Sunnyvale, California, is
part of the Fujitsu Limited family. Fujitsu Software Corporation
leverages Fujitsu's international scope and expertise in developing
and providing information technology solutions. Fujitsu Software
Corporation's products include NetCOBOL® and Interstage®,
e-business infrastructure software. NetCOBOL is a COBOL development
environment and suite of tools to build fast, mission-critical business
systems on open platforms, including Microsoft's .NET Framework.
For more information, visit http://www.fsw.fujitsu.com
Copyright
2004 Fujitsu Software Corporation. Fujitsu, the Fujitsu Symbol Mark,
NetCOBOL and Interstage are registered trademarks, and NeoKicks
is a trademark, of Fujitsu Software.
All other registered trademarks, trade names, or service marks mentioned
in this document are the property of their respective owners.
MORE INFORMATION
Fujitsu Software Corporation
Andrew Mackenzie
(408) 746-6323
andrewm@us.fujitsu.com
Marilyn Green
(650) 218-9986
msg2004@comcast.net
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