NetCOBOL for .NET V2.1 Enhances Agile IT Migration Solutions

Latest release expands scope of NetCOBOL for .NET by simplifying application configuration, providing complete character encoding solutions for international markets, and adding a Btrieve support option.

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 (TSE:6702) family. The wholly owned subsidiary delivers one of the world’s broadest lines of application infrastructure software products, including the Interstage® Suite and NetCOBOL®. Fujitsu Software Corporation leverages Fujitsu’s international scope and expertise in developing and providing information technology solutions, including more than 4,000 software developers worldwide. To learn more about Fujitsu Software Corporation, visit www.fsw.fujitsu.com.

Copyright 2004 Fujitsu Software Corporation. Fujitsu, the Fujitsu Symbol Mark,
and Interstage are registered trademarks of Fujitsu Limited. NetCOBOL is a registered trademark of Fujitsu Software Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.