Technology
The COBOL-IT software includes compiler, development and deployment components that can reduce the costs and risks of any modernization project.
 The COBOL-IT Compiler Suite is designed to ensure maximum portability at the lowest possible cost. It does this by generating C code, which is portable to any POSIX-compliant system. With the COBOL-IT compiler, which is delivered under the Gnu Public License (GPL), you can compile your source anywhere, and then use the local C compiler to create shared libraries. The standard C code generated by COBOL-IT allows portability among all the open systems, including Windows, HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, Linux, and zLinux.
The COBOL-IT compiler has a high level of compatibility with the industry-leading COBOL compilers provided by IBM and Micro Focus as well as support for the External File Handler (EXTFH) interface, and External Sort Module (EXTSM) interface.
 The COBOL-IT Developer Studio aims to maximize programmer productivity as much as possible. Based on the open source Eclipse development environment, the COBOL-IT integrated development environment (IDE) also provides variations such as wizards, configuration screens and a source-level debugger.
Some of the advantages to building an IDE based on Eclipse include:
- The base Eclipse software is open source, which is free and freely distributable.
- The Eclipse community is growing, and since the APIs to plug-ins are agreed-upon and used by all, interoperability is greatly facilitated.
- Duplication of effort is minimized. If the desired functionality already exists, it is not necessary to re-create it.
- Certain concepts within the Eclipse development environment have a standard implementation, but variations on the standard are handled by creating a COBOL-IT "Perspective."
COBOL-IT's flexibility in the area of data access starts with the support for the basic C-ISAM indexed file system, which is highly performant and may suit all of your needs. For customers who require relational database management systems, COBOL-IT also provides a precompiler with native support for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and ODBC. The ODBC solution can be used with the Microsoft SQL Server database. The Oracle Pro*COBOL and IBM UDB/DB2 precompilers can be used with COBOL-IT as well.
COBOL-IT's deployment products emphasize superior performance, interoperability with leading vendors of COBOL re-hosting solutions and online transaction processing (OLTP) monitors, and broad flexibility in the area of data access. Where performance is concerned, the open source nature of the compiler, and the ability to examine the C code generated, gives COBOL-IT developers an opportunity to tune performance at the lowest level.
COBOL-IT also provides powerful production support utilities, including the Deet Debugging Utility, an Application Profiler, an Abend Diagnostic Report, an external Sort utility called Cit-Sort, and an ISAM File Management utility.
The Deet debugger includes the ability to step, set breakpoints and monitors, and to take quick views of variables for their values. The current line of execution can be colorized.
The Application Profiler is designed to aid in identifying bottlenecks in your application, so that performance-related efforts can be undertaken with maximum efficiency. The Abend Diagnostic Report helps isolate the cause of an abend in the minimal amount of time by dumping the maximum amount of information about the state of the system when the abend occurred. CitSort can serve as a drop-in replacement for external sort utilities such as IBM's DFSort, and Micro Focus' MFSort, minimizing the efforts required to adapt your source code for use with COBOL-IT, while providing an in kind high-performance external sort utility. The ISAM File Management utility is an important production support resource, including a rebuild function.
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