Micro Focus adds COBOL remote development
February 12, 2010
Migration-bound sites, or those who have recently arrived on the shores of Linux or Unix environment, make their transitions for many reasons. Improved toolsets and new development muscle through technology is one payoff, although this kind of upgrade usually follows a reduced-risk step of Lift and Shift.
Micro Focus announced a new product that illustrates what is waiting for the COBOL user in other environments. The vendor unveiled Server Express Remote Developer Option (RDO), a new version of their Server Express development platform that enables companies to drastically reduce time and costs for companies building/maintaining COBOL applications on Linux and UNIX servers.
"Server Express RDO is the first COBOL development tool to enable developers to create and maintain applications on a remote server while sitting on a local machine," said Peter Anderton, Product Solutions Director of Application Development at Micro Focus. Anderton was on hand at last fall's e3000 Community Meet to update 3000 users on the new life given to ACUCOBOL.
The RDO for Server Express "allows customers to keep COBOL programs and the source-code on the target server, removing the costly and time-consuming need to transfer code between the development environment and the Unix or Linux server on which the application will be tested and run," Anderton said. "This helps organizations redeploy IT personnel while delivering significant productivity gains in the development process."
Some of the best tools for debugging and testing applications exist in the Windows environment. Anderton believes this Server Express RDO opens the door to more closely emulating the production environment.
“It is critical that organizations debug and test applications in an environment that is as close to production as possible," he said. "In the past, this has meant sacrificing powerful tools when that platform was Unix or Linux.”
Micro Focus has more information at the company's Web page for Eclipse, its development environment.