Micro Focus Visual

COBOL 8.0 for Visual

Studio

Release Notes
 Micro Focus
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trademarks of Micro Focus or one of its affiliates.

All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

2022-06-24

ii
Contents
Micro Focus Visual COBOL 8.0 for Visual Studio Release Notes ..................4
What's New ......................................................................................................... 5
Micro Focus COBOL Extension for Visual Studio Code ......................................................5
.NET 6 Support ................................................................................................................... 5
COBOL Language ...............................................................................................................5
Code Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 6
Compiler Directives ............................................................................................................. 6
Data File Tools .................................................................................................................... 6
Debugging Applications ...................................................................................................... 7
Enterprise Server ................................................................................................................ 7
Enterprise Server Common Web Administration (ESCWA) ................................................ 8
Enterprise Server Security .................................................................................................. 8
The Micro Focus Database File Handler .............................................................................9
Micro Focus Unit Testing Framework .................................................................................. 9
OpenESQL ..........................................................................................................................9
Visual Studio ....................................................................................................................... 9
Significant Changes in Behavior or Usage ....................................................10
Known Issues ................................................................................................... 16
Resolved Issues ............................................................................................... 17
Other Issues Resolved in This Release ........................................................ 40
Unsupported Functionality ..............................................................................41
Additional Software Requirements .................................................................42
Installation ........................................................................................................ 43
Before Installing ................................................................................................................ 43
Downloading the Product ....................................................................................... 43
On Windows ........................................................................................................... 43
Basic Installation ............................................................................................................... 46
Installing ................................................................................................................. 46
Advanced Installation Tasks .............................................................................................. 47
On Windows ........................................................................................................... 47
After Installing ................................................................................................................... 49
On Windows ........................................................................................................... 49
Licensing Information ...................................................................................... 54
To activate Visual COBOL Personal Edition ......................................................................54
To buy and activate a full unlimited license ....................................................................... 54
To start Micro Focus License Administration ....................................................................54
Installing licenses .............................................................................................................. 55
If you have a license file ......................................................................................... 55
If you have an authorization code ...........................................................................55
To obtain more licenses .................................................................................................... 57
Updates and Customer Care ........................................................................... 58
Further Information and Product Support ......................................................................... 58
Information We Need ........................................................................................................ 59
Creating Debug Files ........................................................................................................ 59
Copyright and Disclaimer ................................................................................ 60

Contents | 3
 Micro Focus Visual COBOL 8.0 for Visual
Studio Release Notes
These release notes contain information that might not appear in the Help. Read them in their entirety
before you install the product.
Note:
• This document contains a number of links to external Web sites. Micro Focus cannot be
responsible for the contents of the Web site or for the contents of any site to which it might link.
Web sites by their nature can change very rapidly and although we try to keep our links up-to-date,
we cannot guarantee that they will always work as expected.
• Check the Product Documentation section of the Micro Focus Customer Support Documentation
Web site for any documentation updates.

Product Overview
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.
The product is available in the following variants - Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2017, Visual COBOL for
Visual Studio 2019, and Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2022. The execution environment for applications
created with any of these product variants is COBOL Server.

Upgrading from earlier Micro Focus products

This version of your product is dependent on a later version of the Microsoft C run-time system than earlier
Micro Focus products. This means that COBOL executables (.exe) built with a version earlier than 4.0
might not be compatible with the current version of the run-time products. If the behavior of your application
changes with the current version, we strongly recommend that you relink the main executable with the
current version. This will ensure that the COBOL run-time system fully handles any run-time error
conditions that might occur.
A new executable that is fully compatible with the current version can be produced without recompiling the
application, as long as the original object code is available and it is relinked with the current version.
To allow your executables to benefit from the product's latest programming and performance
enhancements, we recommend a full recompilation of your source code.
If you are using Visual Studio, you can configure the IDE to automatically check whether applications
created with older releases must be relinked. If the application uses an older version of the C run-time
system, Visual COBOL can automatically relink the existing executable or .dll to the new version of the C
run-time system without the need to recompile the application first. If a project needs relinking, Visual
Studio displays a message in the status bar providing an option for you to choose and relink the project.

4 | Micro Focus Visual COBOL 8.0 for Visual Studio Release Notes
What's New
Enhancements are available in the following areas:
• Micro Focus COBOL Extension for Visual Studio Code
• .NET 6 Support
• COBOL Language Enhancements
• Code Analysis
• Compiler Directives
• Data File Tools
• Debugging
• Enterprise Server
• Enterprise Server Common Web Administration
• Enterprise Server Security
• Micro Focus Database File Handler
• Micro Focus Unit Testing Framework
• Open ESQL
• Visual Studio Integration

Micro Focus COBOL Extension for Visual Studio Code

Back to Top
The Micro Focus COBOL extension for Visual Studio Code provides the following enhancements:
• The use of the Micro Focus COBOL extension with Visual COBOL 8.0 installed on the same machine
enables COBOL Language Server support. This offers a rich COBOL editor experience inside Visual
Studio Code including IntelliSense, Peek Definition, and Rename.
Note: The Micro Focus COBOL extension is available from the Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace -
click here.

.NET 6 Support
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This release provides the following enhancement:
• You can create, build and run COBOL projects targeting .NET 6 in Visual Studio 2022. In all other
supported environments, you can use the .NET 6 SDK or Visual Studio code to build .NET 6 COBOL
projects.
Support for .NET Core 3.1 has been discontinued.

COBOL Language
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The following enhancements have been made to the Micro Focus COBOL language:
• Further support for IBM Enterprise COBOL 6.3:

What's New |5
 • JSON PARSE and JSON GENERATE statements - for JSON GENERATE, anonymous objects can
be generated using the OMITTED key word; the SUPPRESS phrase has been enhanced; the
CONVERTING phrase is supported. For JSON PARSE, anonymous objects can be parsed using the
OMITTED key word; the CONVERTING phrase is supported.
• Intrinsic functions - the following list of functions is now supported: COMBINED-DATETIME,
FORMATTED-CURRENT-DATE, FORMATTED-DATE, FORMATTED-DATETIME, FORMATTED-
TIME, INTEGER-OF-FORMATTED-DATE, SECONDS-PAST-MIDNIGHT, SECONDS-FROM-
FORMATTED-DATE, TEST-FORMATTED-DATETIME, and UUID4.
• The AMODE Compiler directive has been enhanced to allow COBOL programs full access to the 64-
bit address space (AMODE"64"). This emulates the LP"64" option in Enterprise COBOL.
• The DYNAMIC LENGTH clause, introduced in the last product release, is now supported in .NET
COBOL (as well native COBOL).
• .NET COBOL enhancements:
• When no explicit type is declared for a variable, but the value is a non-integer numeric (for example
declare var1 = 1.23), it is assumed to be of type float-long.
• The NAME OF expression has been introduced. It returns the unqualified name of the type or
member specified.

Code Analysis
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The Application Analysis Server enables you to access either Micro Focus Enterprise Analyzer or COBOL
Analyzer from the IDE. This release includes the following enhancements to this feature:
• A generate code search report and a single code search reports are available.
• An improved Get Direct References report.
Enhancements to the Analysis Services include:
• An enhanced Program Flow Graph
• Support for displaying the Data Flow analysis as a Graph.
Enhancements in the Rule-Based analysis include:
• The Micro Focus Code Analysis project's properties page, and the Micro Focus Code Analysis
Manager dialog box now support subfolders in the rulesets.

Compiler Directives
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The following Compiler directive is new in this release:
• DISPLAY-PICU - defines the way PIC U data items are displayed: either as ANSI or UTF-8.
The following Compiler directive has been enhanced in this release:
• AMODE - a new parameter "64" stores pointers in 64-bit format - see COBOL Language Enhancements
for more details.

Data File Tools

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The following enhancement has been made to the Data File Tools:

6 | What's New
 • The Data File Editor now supports opening and editing KSDS VSAM files stored in an MFDBFH
datastore.

Debugging Applications
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This release includes the following enhancement:
• Locals window support for native COBOL - during debugging, the Locals window now displays the
names of the variables available on the current statement.

Enterprise Server
Back to Top
This release provides enhancements in the following areas:
• EZ Sockets now supports up to 4096 sockets on Linux, up from 1024, and enhanced tracing.
• EZ Sockets applications, including ones that use the CICS listener CSKL (EZACIC02), can have
more simultaneous connections.
• EZ Sockets tracing now has options for logging the recent history only when any error or one of a set
of particular errors occurs. This makes it easier to use tracing to diagnose EZ Sockets issues.
• Enterprise Server dataset management - dataset maximum retention period with the ability to alter and
create reports:
• ES_JES_ENFORCE_EXPIRE_DATE - helps determine whether or not to check the expiration date
when deleting a catalogued dataset, and if expired, delete the dataset. If it hasn't expired and the
PURGE option has not been specified, the dataset is not removed. The PURGE keyword is required
to delete non-expired datasets. PURGE removes the underlying physical dataset file unless it is
referenced by another catalog entry. SMS MANAGEMENTCLASS now supports maximum RETAIN
days. See Using SMS MGMT Classes and the %SMS example command in the same topic.
• ES_JES_LISTCAT_YMD - helps determine the date format used in the HISTORY report generated
when the IDCAMS LISTCAT command specifies the ALL option.
• The EXPDT entry in a DD statement must be a four-digit year (YYYY); otherwise 1900 is the default,
which is in-line with the mainframe processing, and prevents unexpired datasets from being
erroneously removed (as was the case with the previous default of 2000). The ALTER command now
takes the TO and FOR options to enable specification of the retention period for the entry being
altered. The maximum retention period might be limited by the management class. The IDCAMS
LISTCAT command ALL parameter now generates a separate HISTORY report that shows the
creation date time and job, the last changed date time and Job, and the expiration date.
• HTTP compression - the Communications Server supports compressing large HTTP responses with
gzip, and handles gzip-compressed HTTP requests. The Common Client supports gzip-compressed
HTTP responses. Some large HTTP responses are compressed automatically if the client supports it.
Large HTTP messages can be compressed, saving network bandwidth and improving performance.
• Task-cleanup performance - the performance of post-processing for tasks in MFCS has been improved.
• ICETOOL emulation - now supports the COUNT+n and COUNT-n syntax during trailer processing,
where n is a numeric between 0-999. This adds to or subtracts from the COUNT value.
• Enterprise Server configuration - you can now change the recording directory of the dump, trace, HSF,
and the console.log files of each region. See Alternative Enterprise Server Output Locations for
more information.
• Compression on ECI calls via CASBNCCL Client - when using the Micro Focus External Call Interface
(ECI) over TCP/IP, the request and response data flows are now compressed using RLE.

What's New |7
 Enterprise Server Common Web Administration (ESCWA)
Back to Top
This release includes the following enhancements:
• Oracle Coherence is now available as a PAC Scale-Out repository as an alternative to Redis.
• Reduced number of Redis instances required when a PAC incompatible upgrade is performed - it is now
possible to have multiple PSORs in one REDIS instance. This allows for the REDIS instances
provisioned in the PAC to be reused.
• Enhanced PAC diagnostics via CTF - a new option on the ES Control page is now available to enable or
disable CTF for a running region without the need to recycle the region.
• ESCWA API, version 2 - includes updated versions of some of the existing API, version 1 endpoints,
with improved JSON property names, more sensible URIs. The version 2 API is a single API standard
across API endpoints. It includes a number of usability enhancements, has a better readability and
discoverability, and includes an improved API documentation.
• Enterprise Server Configuration Manager
• A variety of configuration options are available in ESCWA on the General >Advanced page for a
region.
The property grid in ESCWA shows the full list of configurable properties, categorized by group,
along with help text and some additional meta-information. Properties marked as dynamic in the
property grid can also be updated in a running region.
• A number of properties that were previously set with environment variables are now available in the
ESCWA UI. The environment variables are still supported for backward compatibility.
• Accessibility enhancements - the ESCWA UI includes a number of improvements in the areas of
usability with screenreaders, color contrast, and text and icon sizing and alignment. This is to give it an
improved compliance with the 508 and WCAG 2.1 standards.

Enterprise Server Security

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This release includes the following enhancements:
• AWS Secrets Manager - support is available for using an AWS Secrets Manager, mfsecretsaws, as a
remote vault. See The mfsecretsaws Vault Provider .
• Protection for sensitive data - some sensitive data is now protected in the memory. This helps reduce
the risk of exposing sensitive data such as passwords in core dumps and similar scenarios.
• An option to update short names - the ESF Update mechanism enables you to change between OS
users ("long names") and ES userids ("short names") in running regions. This requires a non-default
configuration setting.
• Caching improvements - ESF caching now caches more types of requests. This helps improve the
Enterprise Server latency and throughput when external security is configured with caching.
• Support for Argon2 in password history - when Micro Focus passwords are used with the MLDAP ESM
Module and password history is enabled, use Argon2 password verifiers in the history to avoid the
potential exposure of passwords via weaker verifiers. This helps improve the security of the password-
history mechanism.
• The product Help includes a new section, Securing Enterprise Server, which provides guidance on
improving the security of Enterprise Server installations and the applications they host. This includes
information on security and how to reduce security exposure.

8 | What's New
The Micro Focus Database File Handler
Back to Top
• This release includes the introduction of the Micro Focus Database File Handler (MFDBFH). MFDBFH
enables you to store your data files within one of the supported relational database management
systems, which can be used by your native COBOL applications.
Data files are stored in a 'datastore'. Datastores can each be housed in their own physical database, or
one database can house many datastores. Using data stores gives you the performance and resilience
benefits associated with a modern RDBMS. MFDBFH does not require you make any changes to your
source code in order to use it.
This feature is available as a purchasable add-on.

Micro Focus Unit Testing Framework

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The following enhancement has been made to the Micro Focus Unit Testing Framework in the IDE:
• IDE support has been added for self-contained tests.
The following enhancement has been made to the command-line version of the Micro Focus Unit Testing
Framework:
• You can now use the Micro Focus Unit Testing Framework to build and run test cases from within
a .NET 6 environment. Install the NuGet package supplied with Visual COBOL to enable the mfunit
extensions to the dotnet command line utility.

OpenESQL
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This release includes the following enhancement:
• The new SQL Error Mapping feature enables you to customize how error information is returned in
SQLCODE, SQLSTATE, SQLERR and MFSQLMESSAGETEXT. For details, see SQL Error Mapping in
your product Help.

Visual Studio
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• Support is now available for Visual Studio 2022.
• Syntax coloring for COBOL in the editor had been improved for identification divisions, copybooks
references using COPY... REPLACE statements, and EXEC blocks.

What's New |9
 Significant Changes in Behavior or Usage
This section describes significant changes in behavior or usage. These changes could potentially affect the
behavior of existing applications or impact the way the tools are used.
The numbers that follow each issue are the Support Case Number followed by the Defect number (in
parentheses).
• Code Analysis
• Common Communications Interface
• Compiler
• Containers
• Enterprise Server
• Machine Administration
• File Handling
• Micro Focus Directory Server
• Run-time System
• SQL: OpenESQL

Code Analysis
Back to the list
• Rules in nested folders are now correctly processed, as well as rules with the same name.
(207020)

Common Communications Interface

Back to the list
• For improved security, SSL/TLS connections are now restricted to TLS versions 1.2 and 1.3 by default.
This is an industry best practice. If you need to use older, less-secure protocol versions with legacy
clients or servers you should consult the product online help for instructions on configuring TLS protocol
versions.
PSEC:103001 (87188)

Compiler
Back to the list
• When a RELEASE or RETURN statement is executed in an input or output procedure of a sort
statement, if the SORT-RETURN special register is found to contain a value of 16, then the sort should
be aborted, even in a case where the RELEASE or RETURN statement is at a lower perform level than
the input or output procedure itself. Previously, this was not happening for programs compiled to JVM
or .NET COBOL, but this erroneous behavior is now fixed.
01723392 (104114)
• When a variable is defined in a DECLARE statement with no explicit type, but a value that is a non-
integer numeric literal, the type is assumed to be float-long (i.e. a 64 bit floating point).
(148103)

Containers
Back to the list

10 | Significant Changes in Behavior or Usage

• The containers image build tool now supports custom Java run-times which helps to keep the size of
Java-based applications smaller.
(182004)

Enterprise Server
Back to the list
• The Security Manager passwords no longer appear in the commonwebadmin.json configuration file.
(203052)
• The X-XSS-Protection header will now be set on all requests instead of only on API requests.
01938835 (138176)
• In ESCWA, the colors and contrast have been adjusted to improve visual accessibility.
01995403 (158071)
• ESCWA now displays an improved message if there is an issue with loading the application, especially
in the case where there is a browser incompatibility.
(241013)
• ESCWA now handles enterprise server regions that use character encodings other than windows-1252.
00370773 (11742)
• In ESCWA, the Console Log page now enables you to easily traverse and navigate the log. The new
paging feature uses an API call from the Communications Server group documented in the Enterprise
Server Administration Server API, typically located at http://localhost:10086/docs/#/
Communications_Server on the machine where you have the product installed.
02085456 (191017)
• ESCWA now supports multiple PACs in a single Redis store.
(248003)
• ESCWA now handles enterprise server regions that use character encodings other than windows-1252.
(91001)
• In ESCWA, on the Communications Process page you can now specify a Requested Status for the
communications process.
00669779 OCTCR50A69378 (69378)
• In ESCWA, the Catalog DCB page now displays the file size in bytes.
01909652 (138002)
• ESCWA now supports Circular Logging. On the Tracing and Logging Settings page you can now
specify the Log Max File Size and the Log File Count fields. By default, these fields are set to 1024kB
and 5 respectively. See Tracing and Logging Settings in your product Help for more information.
02083633 (191019)
• In ESCWA, a new optional Logon security resource has been added. This can be used to control
users' ability to log on. See Security Resources to Control ESCWA and API Access in your product Help
for more information.
01886579 (124022)
• You can now define and install shared SOR Models. In the SOR Model dialog box, check Shared to
enable the SOR Model to be shared between PACs.
(244088)
• For LDAP-based security in Enterprise Server, the processing of password changes has been modified
to address security issues, inconsistencies among configurations, and other issues. See Understanding
passwords with LDAP-based security in your product Help for more information.
(118088)

Significant Changes in Behavior or Usage | 11

 • Enterprise Server with LDAP-based security now denies a sign-on attempt by default if it includes a
password-change request (a new password is supplied), and the password change fails. This was the
existing behavior in some configurations but not in others. It is now consistent and configurable. See
MLDAP ESM Module Custom Configuration Information in your product Help for more information.
(108046)
• A change has been made to the way that TS queues and TD queues are stored in a PAC. This was to
ensure that deleting a 0TSQ did not also delete all queues that had a 0TSQ_ name prefix.
Note: After the update is applied you must cold start your PAC.

(183044)
• In a PAC, the SIT setting is now honored when a TS or TD is to be applied to the enterprise server
region if the TS or TD is not under a SOR, MFDBFH, or Fileshare. This means that if a SIT has to cold
start for TS or TD and the files are either in the workarea or on disk then the SIT settings will be applied,
otherwise the PAC-wide settings will be applied.
02149316 (204020)
• EZASOKET traffic will now be assigned to Communications Process instance #1. You might need to
consider this if you use load balancing.
02060014 (201009)
• When a PAC is cold started, the configuration file specified by MFDBFH_CONFIG will be uploaded to
the PSOR and a temporary file created in the enterprise server region’s workarea. This temporary file
will be used by all the processes for that enterprise server region. Subsequent enterprise server regions
joining the PAC will then create a temporary file in its workarea for the MFDBFH_CONFIG from the
PSOR store. If an enterprise server region in the PAC is killed or is terminated abruptly than the restart
of the enterprise server region will try to recover the previous UUID left in the PAC and DEQ all
remaining ENQs in MFDBFH that were created from the previous run. New messages will be created in
the console.log identifying if the recovery was initiated and successful, if the enterprise server region
could not be recovered automatically, the region will stop. A log file will be created in the workarea with
the following file naming convention:
Caspac_Recover_UUID_xxxxxxxxxxxx.log

For example: CASCD4012W Region was not stopped properly, recovering previous region UUID
14BAAA87B4C010BFBDE278A5F65B350C 18:15:17CASCD4014I UUID recovery file log C:\Users
\mag.CORPDOM\Documents\Micro Focus User\Enterprise Developer\WORKAREA
\RAS1\Caspac_Recover_UUID_14BAAA87B4C010BFBDE278A5F65B350C.log 18:15:18. Using
the caspac utility with the -aStatus parameter will display if the enterprise server region in a PAC has
lost its connection to the PSOR. If you determine that the region is no longer in the PAC, then you can
run the caspac utility with the -aRecoverUUID parameter to recover the enterprise server region. If
the -aRecoverUUID parameter is used, then a file will be created in the current directory with the
following file naming convention:
02081952 02123645 (182093)
Caspac_Recover_UUID_xxxxxxxxxxxx.log.

See caspac in your product Help for more information.

• Functions have been added to file_utilities which check a given file name against either a default
blacklist containing operating system reserved file names, or a passed blacklist. Read, write, and delete
in AES and MSCPD use this function to disallow secret names which are inappropriate names.
OCTCR50A7844 (112022)
• Fileshare is no longer used to locate the Resource Definition and CNV file.
00468648 (69010)
• MQ updates did not rollback on step failure. This has been fixed.
01976727 02161235 (155010)

12 | Significant Changes in Behavior or Usage

• PSOR stores are now prefixed by the PAC NAME and a version number enabling you to run multiple
PACs in the same PSOR, simplifying the incompatible upgrade process. The caspac utility enables you
to add the PAC Name as part of the command line parameters using -pPACName or if not specified
using the ES_PAC environment variable. See caspac in your product Help for more information.
(202162)
• The XA reconnect mechanism now attempts to reconnect to all XA entries marked as "enabled" at the
start up of the enterprise server region. To prevent the reconnect attempts, do one of the following:
• Remove the XA manager from the enterprise server region definition.
• Set the XA manager as disabled before starting the enterprise server region.
01991481 02003277 (151008)
• A new MLDAP ESM custom configuration section has been added. The [Prefix Search] option
enables the Prefix Search wildcard optimization for limiting the scope of wildcard resource entities
checked under a resource class. See MLDAP ESM Module Custom Configuration Information in your
product Help for more information.
00726158 (73180)
• For LDAP-based security in Enterprise Server, the processing of password changes has been modified
to address security issues, inconsistencies among configurations, and other issues. See Understanding
passwords with LDAP-based security in your product Help for more information.
(118088)
• Enterprise Server with LDAP-based security will now by default deny a signon attempt if it includes a
password-change request (a new password is supplied), and the password change fails. This was the
existing behavior in some configurations but not in others. It is now consistent and configurable. See
MLDAP ESM Module Custom Configuration Information in your product Help for more information.
(108046)

File Handling
Back to the list
• The dbfhadmin utility has been enhanced to allow the integrity of a datastore to be verified, and
optionally, fixed up: use the dbfhadmin -verify -list|-recover options. See The dbfhadmin
Command Line Utility in your product Help for more information.
00778044 (90143)
• The dbfhadmin command-line utility has been enhanced to provide the capability for verifying and
optionally repairing (cross-)region databases.
02123645 (193071)
• The cross-region database heartbeat interval can now be configured using the dbfhconfig -add|-
update -heartbeat interval-in-seconds command. The default heartbeat interval remains as
5 seconds. A warning message is now output to the Enterprise Server console during region database
start-up if the heartbeat interval is configured to be >15 seconds. The larger the heartbeat interval, the
longer the time that is required to be able to recover (cross-)region database resources. Recovery can
only take place for a process if its associated heartbeat record has not heartbeat within the last
"heartbeat-interval + 5" seconds.
02155269 (202149)
• The performance of PostgreSQL optimized I/O has been improved. If you use the psqlodbc device
driver, you will need to ensure that you are running with version 12.02.0000 or later. This change has
been tested with version 13.01.0000. To take advantage of the performance benefits of this change,
specify BatchSize=100 for each of your ODBC DSNs. Using a version of the driver earlier than
12.02.0000 could result in a performance degradation when deploying large files to datastores.
(125032)

Significant Changes in Behavior or Usage | 13

 • Table record locking and database record locking are incompatible and may lead to data corruption if
used together by separate processes when processing the same file. MFDBFH has been enhanced to
ensure that if a file is already opened in a process with table locking, all other processes attempting to
open the same file, even if requesting database locking, will also use table locking. However, if a
process has a file opened using database locking, other processes attempting to open the file will only
be allowed to do so if they are transactional files (i.e. database record locking can only be used for
transactional files). An attempt to open the file as non-transactional will fail. Refer to the Record Locking
Strategies documentation for more information.
(102011)
• MFDBFH now enforces the existing requirement that a region database used by a PAC, or a region
database used by an ES region configured to use ES_LOCK_DB, is not used by any other PAC or
ES_LOCK_DB regions. This is necessary to avoid problems such as jobs with the same name
submitted to two separate regions, but erroneously using the same region database, from being blocked
by waiting on SYSZJOBD and/or SYSZJOBN ENQs. A check is now performed during region start-up to
ensure that the region database is not already being used by another region, If it is, the region start up
will fail, with error messages indicating the cause of the failure output to the ES console. Existing ES
PACs/regions will need to be stopped and restarted for these new region database state checks to take
effect. The dbfhadmin -region -status [-reset] command has been introduced to allow a
region database's state to be displayed and, optionally, reset. See Resource Locking in your product
Help for more information..
(121030)

Machine Administration
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• A problem with using the .NET 3.5 framework has been fixed.
(204144)
• A problem with CPU conversion has been corrected.
(199042)

Micro Focus Directory Server

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• The mfds /s option supports the specification of the optional Enterprise Server user id and
password parameters using a configured Micro Focus Vault Facility location rather than using literal
strings for credentials. For example:
mfds /s 1 mfsecret:user/user_001/id mfsecret:user/user_001/pwdwhere user/
user_001/id and user/user_001/pwd

Are secrets stored in the default-configured vault. These values can be populated and administered
using the mfsecretsadmin utility. See Vault Facility in your product Help for more information.The
mfds /x and /g command-line options also support credentials stored in the vault.
02131532 (193088)
• If MFDS is configured to store sensitive values in the vault (for example, XA openstring or autostart
credentials), these values were not being included in legacy data format or XML export of Enterprise
Server configuration information. Subsequently, these values could not be reimported. These sensitive
values are now included in the exported data. Micro Focus recommends that you protect the exported
files with appropriate access control.
(202272)

Run-time System
Back to the list

14 | Significant Changes in Behavior or Usage

• The native COBOL multi-threaded demo is now available for Windows development products.
(3765)
• Basic support for xterm-256color has been implemented.
(57591)

SQL: OpenESQL
Back to the list
• A performance problem in a SQL program using fixed-length character arrays when compiling a COBOL
program and using array fetch has been resolved.
02152406 (203060)
• A new feature to assist migration between databases has been added. SQL error codes and messages
may be mapped to different values or supressed to match those expected by the application.
(193003)

Significant Changes in Behavior or Usage | 15

 Known Issues
Refer to the Known Issues and Restrictions topic in the Product Information section of your product Help.
In addition, note the following:
• Problems with Microsoft's Visual Studio 2022, release 17.2, might cause the following issues with Visual
COBOL or Enterprise Developer for Visual Studio 2022. The issues do not exist in release 17.1. See
the points below for the workarounds to these issues:
• Mixed-language multi-project builds might fail as a result of the project dependencies not working
correctly. This means that some projects might build in parallel when they should build in a specific
order. As a result, the build might fail due to a dependency not always being available. To work
around this issue, click Tools > Options > Preview Features, and check Load projects faster
(some features may be delayed).
• The expanded copybook visualizations are missing. This includes breakpoint, current statement
when debugging, and others. These features might not always function correctly in non-expanded
source (in the main programs) if that program contains expanded copybooks. To work around this
issue, you can disable inline copybook expansions.
• It is not possible to upgrade from a 7.0 version of the Visual Studio-based product, if you are targeting a
different version of Visual Studio. For example, it is not possible to upgrade from Visual COBOL 7.0 for
Visual Studio 2017 to Visual COBOL 8.0 for Visual Studio 2019.
• It is not possible to install the 8.0 version of the Visual COBOL Build Tools as an upgrade of an existing
7.0 installation. You must first uninstall the 7.0 product.
• The Server Core form of Windows Server 2019 is not supported.
• In Visual COBOL 4.0 and 5.0 in an extremely small and limited set of cases, an issue could occur with
running .NET executables and .dll files, or JVM .class files, created with an earlier version of the
product. This issue only occurred if:
1. The application performs an IS NUMERIC condition test on a variable declared with USAGE
NATIONAL.
2. The application has been created with Visual COBOL 3.0 or earlier, then executed in Visual COBOL
4.0 or 5.0.
In these rare cases, the IS NUMERIC test could provide the wrong answer.
In order to resolve this issue, in Visual COBOL 6.0 and later, the .NET COBOL and JVM COBOL run-
times reject any program using IS NUMERIC on a NATIONAL item which was compiled with a version
5.0 or earlier of the product. You receive a "missing method" exception. To resolve the issue, you need
to recompile any programs that use this construct in the newer versions of Visual COBOL.
Program that do not use NATIONAL data, or those that have been recompiled in Visual COBOL 6.0 or
later are not affected.

16 | Known Issues
Resolved Issues
The numbers that follow each issue are the Support Incident Numbers followed by the Defect number (in
parentheses).
• Character Animator
• Code Analysis
• Common Communications Interface
• Compiler
• Data Tools
• Dialog System
• Debugger
• Documentation
• Enterprise Server
• File Handling
• Interface Mapping Toolkit
• Micro Focus Common Client
• Micro Focus Directory Server
• Micro Focus License Administration
• Micro Focus Support
• Panels
• Run-time System
• Setup
• SQL: COBSQL
• SQL: DB2 ECM
• SQL: OpenESQL
• Visual Studio Code
• Visual Studio IDE

Character Animator
Back to the list
• The cobesdebug command now functions correctly on s390 Linux machines.
02126702 (204053)

Code Analysis
Back to the list
• Some memory leaks causing a crash in the process have been fixed.
00506227 (69251)
• An issue with Data Flow analysis has been fixed.
(245019)
• Visual Studio now supports analyzing COBOL Unit Test Projects.
(234009)
• Added support for analysis using the ChildrenCount attribute.
02068434 (174080)

Resolved Issues | 17
 • A new code rule has been added to general queries to identify COBOL statements ending with a period.
00488450 (204164)
• A new code rule has been added in general queries that identifies COBOL statements ending with a
period.
00488450 (202186)

Common Communications Interface

Back to the list
• Improvements have been made to the validation of server certificates for SSL/TLS connections.
(244007)

Compiler
Back to the list
• 32-bit Intel x86 generated code only: when a statement of form 'set length of dynamic-item to var-a' is
followed immediate by an arithmetic statement using var-a, incorrect code could be generated. This has
been fixed.
(124033)
• The following code:
move address of item-1 to ptr-item

Where item-1 is a group item, created incorrect code. This has been fixed.
02108263 (189014)
• The following command:
cob -x prog.cbl

Where prog.cbl contained user-defined functions, would create an executable with the wrong name,
which did not behave correctly. This has been fixed.
(7760)
• Spurious background parse errors no longer occur when switching between DIALECT"ENTCOBOL"
and DIALECT"MF" programs.
(246064)
• An EXEC statement containing incorrect syntax now receives a single appropriate error without
additional spurious messages.
(5093)
• COPY statements specifying a filename with an extension longer than 10 characters are now
successfully processed, as they were in earlier products.
02223965 (246061)
• A WRITE statement following a WRITE AFTER statement no longer produces extra, spurious blank
lines.
02177282 02212276 02202768 (212006)
• Use of ANY LENGTH arguments in user functions now work as expected.
00507152 (98059)
• Generation of a program with implied linkage parameters now completes successfully.
(202177)
• Use of $DISPLAY VCS = syntax in a multi-program source now compiles as expected.
02033283 (167013)

18 | Resolved Issues
• A syntax error for a statement appearing on the same line, and after a COPY statement, is now
reported with the correct error location.
(4795)
• A syntax error for a statement appearing on the same line, and after a COPY statement, is now
reported with the correct error location.
(3860)
• INSPECT REPLACING operands of unequal size now receive a run-time system error, thus preventing
data corruption from occurring.
(4667)
• A STRING statement in a program with a large amount of data now executes as expected.
02132926 (202023)
• When scrolling upwards in Character Animator, correct source lines for nested copybooks are now
always shown correctly.
02209782 (246075)
• A bracketed abbreviated condition with implied subject and leading 'NOT' now compiles as expected.
(5249)
• Non-ASCII characters in comment entries now appear correctly in EA reports.
00428434 (87204)
• Compilation of a DECLARE statement that is missing the AS keyword now reports a syntax error and
completes without looping.
(202291)
• A Quick Browse of data names containing DBCS characters now returns correct results.
(2840)
• Reference modification on the results of an intrinsic function now returns the correct result in all
scenarios.
(3877)
• SSRANGE messages have been enhanced to show line and file information.
00732371 (91169)
• The reference count for data items used in CALL statements is now shown correctly.
02130511 (193060)
• A program using AS as a data name now compiles successfully and is processed correctly by EA when
using an Enterprise COBOL dialect (where this is a context-sensitive reserved word only.)
(221073)
• All currency sign values that are valid for Enterprise COBOL are now correctly accepted under that
dialect.
(220072)
• In Visual Studio, Find all references for an ambiguous name that is the subject of a REDEFINES
clause now shows expected results.
02093998 (190032)
• EA analysis is now correct for an item referenced in the COUNT clause of an XML GENERATE
statement.
(222066)
• Non-ASCII characters in long comment lines are now correctly processed by Enterprise Analyzer
tooling.
(120026)

Resolved Issues | 19
 • A SEARCH ALL operation that contains another SEARCH ALL operation inside of the AT END clause
now evaluates its WHEN clauses correctly.
01829511 (110077)
• The EA and XMLGEN directives now produce separate XML files if the file name option in the EA
directive and the path option in the XMLGEN directive are both used.
01726038 (110026)
• Reference information in the IDE for qualified paragraph names is now correct.
(73204)
• The insertion of large amounts of replacement text from the REPLACE statement no longer causes
execution to hang.
01803571 (106074)
• A new directive, DISPLAY-PICU has been added to determine how PIC U items are displayed to the
console: either as UTF-8 or ANSI.
(142003)
• The TYPEDEF clause cannot be used in conjunction with the DYNAMIC LENGTH clause.
(254008)
• When used with some formats of icon file, the ILICON directive could result in a system error during
compilation. This is now fixed.
00733709 (87102)
• A new directive, ILLOADSTRING"1", has been implemented which, if specified, changes the way string
loads are generated in a program compiled to .NET. This may be useful when compiling very large
projects for which the error 'COBCH0857 System error - failure during ILASM phase' is returned.
00722937 (83144)
• The new NAME OF expression is now available in .NET COBOL, and returns the unqualified name of
the type or member specified.
(158040)
• The IS GLOBAL clause is now permitted for Linkage Section items in .NET COBOL code.
(70254)

Data Tools
Back to the list
• When a filter is set on a data file, records outside of the filter are no longer inadvertently deleted when
deleting filtered records.
02151283 (204027)
• In the Data File Editor, records are now inserted correctly, even when the files are not stored on the C:\
drive.
02084190 (194028)
• Within the Data File Editor, when data files are opened through Enterprise Server, they will now close
correctly when the related SEP is manually removed.
(235011)
• When working with data sets via ESCWA in the Data File Editor, if you attempt to filter the catalog
without first logging in to ESCWA, you will now be prompted to log in instead of being shown an error.
Also, entering correct login credentials after a previous failed login attempt no longer shows a 403 error,
but will instead correctly log in and open the catalog.
01984967 02031391 (163059)
• Cosmetic changes have been made to some of the Data File Editor dialog boxes to ensure that all
button/screen text is displayed correctly.

20 | Resolved Issues
 01984967 02031391 (162069)
• Within the Data File Editor, MFDBFH files (that is, those stored in a database) can now be opened as
either shared or exclusive.
(234017)
• In the Data File Editor, hexadecimal values can now be used in the Value field when applying a filter to
a data set.
02306658 (246107)
• In the Data File Editor, when the ruler is on, a vertical guideline is displayed down the page every 10
columns. Toggle the ruler off to remove the guidelines.
02306661 (246106)

Debugger
Back to the list
• Opening a large core dump file in the debugger now displays an error if the file is too large to be
debugged.
01872464 (124123)
• Core files larger than approximately 1.5Gb can now be debugged on Windows, provided enough
memory is available to the debug process. If there is insufficient memory, error 1050 will be displayed by
the debugger.
02166754 (220131)
• Level-78 items longer than 512 bytes no longer cause the debugger to crash when querying.
02096915 (185023)
• A new argument (progbponly) is available to allow program breakpoints to be used when dynamically
debugging Enterprise Server applications - see How to debug services and applications with Enterprise
Server Dynamic Debugging in the product Help for more details.
00468081 (70023)

Dialog System
Back to the list
• The create-window, show-window and create-dialog-box events are now correctly handled when
multiple versions of a dialog system application are running.
02074907 (181035)

Documentation
Back to the list
• The definitions for the ASSIGN directive parameters have been corrected in the documentation.
(10604)
• A restriction has been added to the documentation stating that you cannot call COBOL programs
containing COMP-1 or COMP-2 parameters specified BY VALUE, and conversely, you also cannot call
a C program using a COBOL program containing COMP-1 or COMP-2 parameters specified BY
VALUE.
(8415)
• The documented syntax for CBL_GET_ERROR_INFO has been corrected.
(124059)
• The parameter block for CBL_GET_OS_INFO has been updated. The cblte-osi-rts-
capabilities flag now contains a bit that indicates MFDBFH enablement.

Resolved Issues | 21
 (118068)
• When debugging in the IDE, you cannot extend the length of dynamic-length variables beyond their
current size at the point of execution. Any data beyond the current size is truncated.
(209031)
• The documentation has been updated to clarify that the PREPLIST directive only affects preprocessors.
It will not produce additional content for external compiler modules (ECMs), such as the DB2 ECM.
01717477 (97172)
• A note has been added to the mftrace.application and mftrace.time CTF documentation
topics to state that these properties cannot be altered once the specified application has been started.
(4881)
• The documentation for the TEXTFILE and BINFILE Emitter properties has been updated to state when
the LOCATION property is used.
(3896)
• The properties for the mf.rts CTF component have been updated/corrected in the documentation.
(195073)
• Additional links have been added to the documentation for 'dynamic length' items, to allow easier
access to all information relating to this subject.
(230024)
• The documentation has been updated to better explain some of the options available when installing the
Micro Focus License Manager.
(97130)
• A note has been added to the documentation to point out that the level numbers used in a segment
layout file do not correspond to the level numbers that are used in the COBOL source (although the
same group structure is maintained).
00778667 (97101)
• The Data File Tools restriction 'National data items are not supported in record or segment layouts' has
been removed from the documentation.
(123088)
• The Large File Support for Fileshare documentation now points you towards the permissible file limits
for indexed files.
(104263)
• The Prerequisites topic in the Scale-Out Performance and Availability Clusters section has been
updated to include the support for Oracle 19c.
02038850 (167027)
• The Application Server JCA support for Enterprise Server topic has been updated to clarify support for
64- vs. 32-bit.
(161102)
• The Configuring Security using Active Directory topic contained a broken link to the video covering how
to define an external security manager. This has been fixed.
02004032 (158052)
• Anonymous binds have been disabled by default on MFDS instances which use "Restrict administration
access". This means that applications such as ESCWA and MFCS which query MFDS Enterprise
Server configuration data will be required to specify some form of credentials based on the MFDS
security configuration. See Class - Enterprise Server Administration in your product Help for more
information.
02209662 (244017)
• Within the documentation, refinements have been made to the tutorial: Developing a PL/I application in
Eclipse.

22 | Resolved Issues
 (236024)
• Slight amendments have been made to the documented Running Unit Tests in the IDE tutorial in Visual
Studio products.
(231022)

Enterprise Server
Back to the list
• The CPU Warning for a threshold incorrectly calculated that the process was using CPU. This has now
been fixed.
00367274 (26052)
• An RTS 114 resulted when using the MQPUT1 with the ES_MQMONEX exit. This has been fixed.
02026475 (161077)
• In an HSF-enabled enterprise server region, a task that was killed for exceeding a threshold sometimes
caused shared memory corruption if it was purged during a local trace table rollover. This would cause
casmgr to trap and bring down the enterprise server region. This has been fixed.
02133017 (194118)
• A SEP could stop producing system traces. This has been fixed.
02068443 (195029)
• The list of SOR models was truncated if it exceeded 256 bytes for a given type (TS or TD). Previously,
truncation could occur midway through a prefix, resulting in an incorrect prefix being applied to TS/TD
processing. This has been fixed so that truncation occurs only after the last complete prefix. In addition,
a warning message (CASSI9042W) is sent to the console log. If this message is detected, then the
SOR models need to be reviewed and reduced to less than 256 bytes or, if not possible, then the user
exit TSTDSRUE can be used instead.
(245129)
• A performance improvement has been made so that there is no attempt to access a TSQ during REQID
generation in the START processing triggered by the EZASOKET listener.
(153017)
• A transient SEP in a PAC could hit a runtime error on process shutdown. This has been fixed.
(221080)
• The casmgr could crash after killing a process that exceeded a threshold and the enterprise server
region was configured with a positive dump_limit value. This has been fixed.
(204106)
• When a terminal is installed without a termtype defined, and the netname is already in use, a new
message "CASCL0002S Auto-install error, NETNAME xxxxx already in use" will be written to CSSL.
02166861 (221052)
• When using casout in a PAC, the PACNAME was not added as a prefix to the security call. This has
been fixed.
02008463 (156097)
• A memory corruption when synchronizing a PSOR in shared memory has been fixed.
02211316 (245052)
• If an alias transaction was marked disabled and used in a URIMAP, the transaction was still executed.
This has been fixed.
02180247 (222112)
• The EZASOKET listener will now reject connections when no more sockets are available instead of
terminating and waiting for new sockets to be available to continue working.
02049614 (170013)

Resolved Issues | 23
 • A timing issue that could have resulted in a SEP registered in the dispatch chain even after a
registration error has been fixed.
02176557 (211023)
• An issue where a job could be dispatched after the enterprise server region had started to shutdown
has been fixed.
02103857 (191022)
• Previously a dump of all the SOR stores was taken when a dump command was issued. In future, a
dump of the SOR stores will only occur when a system dump has been requested. This will reduce the
number of dumps generated in the system.
02131841 (193081)
• When using query security for TRANSATTACH the wrong class XPCT was used instead of XTRAN, this
has been fixed.
02198966 (244051)
• In a PAC, if an enterprise server region could not be started and casmgr failed in initialization before
connecting to the PAC, cascd could decrement the number of enterprise server regions contained in
the PAC. This has been fixed.
02055658 (176012)
• A dead lock could occur if a process had been killed whilst in a third-party program by the threshold
monitor thread. This has been fixed.
02064488 (175076)
• PCT block was not addressed under certain circumstances. This has now been fixed
02202935 (224016)
• If the entry point mapper was used to map MQ calls and the connection had been lost to MQ, a trap in
dfheibmq could occur. This has been fixed.
02082822 (182086)
• When an enterprise server region is running in a PAC, certain locks that were unnecessarily stored in
the database will now be stored in the enterprise server region’s shared memory, improving
performance.
01932670 (146018)
• Values returned in ESCWA/ESMAC for active TRANCLASS could be corrupted if CTF was active. This
has been fixed.
(244052)
• When switching for MIQM from one MQSERVER to another MQSERVER, a network error could be
returned by MQ resulting in an XA error code -5. If this happens the SEP will be recycled as the work
cannot be processed in that state any longer.
02211334 (246063)
• If an error occurs when calling SAFMGR on SEP initialization after the enterprise server region was
started successfully because the LDAP connection was lost,the SEP will now stop but the enterprise
server region will not, and the next SEP will have a chance to reconnect to LDAP.
02031096 (174010)
• If the casout utility times out, it will now close the session enabling another request to reconnect to the
server side.
01994995 (203057)
• If a TCLASS key contained the ‘@’ character then Enterprise Server could not correctly read it. This has
been fixed.
02287206 (260120)

24 | Resolved Issues
• An issue where the group name specified on the casstart command line was not being passed and
used correctly causing the region to not stay up has been fixed. The condition was that the default
group associated with the user did not have permissions to start the region (OPERCMDS casstart).
02163023 (245046)
• In a PAC setup, ENQ's on the pipeline and webservice resources are no longer stored in the DB. They
are stored in SHM.
00775012 (91020)
• An issue with EXEC CICS DELAY API when compiling with DIALECT(OSVS) has been fixed.
02206914 (236048)
• The TABLE resource under MFESMAC now controls whether the user can modify the services in
ESMAC or ESCWA.
02131841 (194095)
• Security checks were being performed against an incorrect resource when cataloged datasets were
accessed using the data file editor. This has been fixed.
02160499 (203144)
• A mutex was taken too early resulting in a serialization of work been processed when a terminal
disconnect was issued. This has now been fixed.
02068931 (181001)
• A link to a remote PPT was not correctly removing the PPT from the PAC resulting in a subsequent
inquire to find the PPT local. This has been fixed.
02206930 (235037)
• Improve performance by opening spool files once at the start of the process and not open/close for
each request.
01994995 (194119)
• Custom HSF fields now correctly handle the maximum data length of 255 characters.
(5794)
• In ESMAC, a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability has been fixed.
00376857 (104212)
• The very first record written by an initialized SEP to an extended variable length ESDS file gave an error
of EIBRESP2=110 with EIBRESP=0. This has been fixed.
00367116 (86028)
• When using the Micro Focus External Call Interface (ECI) over TCP/IP, the request and response data
flows are now compressed using RLE.
3207572 (13314)
• Under some conditions, when a security look up failed the administrative LISTRESOURCE request
would be driven. If the target class contained a significant number of members, the time taken to
complete this could impact performance. A change in the ESM interface means the LISTRESOURCE
request is no longer being executed.
00748245 (88213)
• When a LINK explicitly or implicitly specifying a remote transaction ID, EIBTRNID would be incorrectly
populated with the target transid. This has been fixed.
02250109 (252012)
• When performing a dynamic remote LINK; that is, when using the SYSID option a PPT entry was being
erroneously created in the local enterprise server region. This has been fixed.
02156790 (203165)
• When starting a debug session, particularly when remote, an internal shared memory lock would result
in the enterprise server region becoming unresponsive until the session was established. This has been
fixed.

Resolved Issues | 25
 02158284 02177256 (203215)
• Enterprise Server now appropriately populates the entity name when validating remote file access for
mfDataTools2.
02111703 (191045)
• CASCD will no longer clear all remaining locks in the region database if it is being shut down while in
quiesce mode.
(185025)
• A buffer insertion logic error resulting in a truncated Enterprise Server Environment has been fixed.
01920281 (142016)
• The ESMAC HTTP status codes have been updated to be more appropriate for certain errors.
(202271)
• Enterprise Server will no longer perform a recursive call while waiting for a TRANCLASS dispatch in a
PAC.
02168754 (204246)
• The THRESHOLD CICS resource and its attributes are now prefixed by an underscore when exported
with casrdtex as they are Micro Focus specific. The casrdtup import utility now also requires this
underscore.
(245063)
• Parameters given to mfconfigmanagerapi calls were misaligned. The API was also using an
incompatible library causing exception handling to fail when attempting to read the definition file. This
has been fixed.
(194046)
• Dynamic debugging port operations are now under a Mutex.
02155297 (203227)
• Fixed an issue with the display of RTS error messages in the console.log file.
01838001 (116004)
• An issue where a SEP did not recycle on xa-start failure has been fixed.
01839273 (112032)
• The new user exit BKAUXTRC has been added. The BKAUXTRC exit will be called when a trace switch
occurs in an enterprise server region. The current aux trace will be closed and renamed to .bkp and
the BKAUXTRC exit is then called to archive the file so that trace is not lost in a busy system. See Exit
When a Trace Switch Occurs in an Enterprise Server Region in your product Help for more information.
(162021)
• A new RemShrQueues action has been added to the caspac utility. This option enables you to delete
all stores called Shared_CasTSQ_RC, Shared_CasTSQ_NR, Shared_CasTDQ_RC, and
Shared_CasTDQ_NR. See caspac in your product Help for more information.
(217010)
• In ESCWA, a new option has been added to the ES Control page to enable CTF to be dynamically
enabled/disabled on a started enterprise server region. See ES Control in your product Help for more
information.
01926245 (142040)
• A new caspac action, RemOldPAC, has been added to enable the removal of old PAC stores not
prefixed. See caspac in your product Help for more information.
(252007)
• You can now use the caslock command to view a list of locks for enterprise server regions that are
members of a PAC. See Lock Processing in your product Help for more information.

26 | Resolved Issues
 Note: You cannot use caslock to remove locks in a PAC.

02205807 (236041)
• The HTML document lang attribute now changes when the language of the ESCWA application
changes.
02010059 (156074)
• In ESCWA, removing a dynamic debugging session was incorrectly returned from the API request. This
resulted in a "Request Failed: Unexpected error processing request" message on the dynamic
debugging request page in the UI. This has been fixed.
02135527 (193107)
• The ESCWA UI files are now included in Solaris builds.
(103080)
• An issue with ESCWA encoding when operating with SJIS encoding has been fixed.
02157606 (204076)
• The ESCWA Client Web API documentation has been corrected for two endpoints:/native/v1/regions/
{host}/{port}/{region}/enqmodel/view/{resource}/discardhas been corrected to:/native/v1/regions/{host}/
{port}/{region}/enqmodel/view/{resource}/uninstallIn addition:/native/v1/regions/{host}/{port}/{region}/
tsmodel/view/{resource}/discardhas been corrected to:/native/v1/regions/{host}/{port}/{region}/tsmodel/
view/{resource}/uninstall
(259031)
• The MfRequestedEndpoint value in the ESCWA configuration file (typically commonwebadmin.json)
was being set to an invalid endpoint. When the ESCWA server starts, it uses this value as the endpoint
for it to start on; if it is invalid, the ESCWA server would error and fail to start. This issue has been fixed
by added server-side validation for the MfRequestedEndpoint field: the value must be in the format
protocol:host:port; protocol must be "tcp" or "tcpssl"; host must be a valid hostname, IPv4, or IPv6
address, or "*". The port must be a valid port number or "*". Any request attempting to set
MfRequestedEndpoint to a value that does not meet these validation requirements is rejected with a
400 "Bad Request" HTTP error. If the ESCWA configuration file has already been set to an
MfRequestedEndpoint value, the ESCWA server will still fail to start, but will now output a more specific
error message. In this case, the issue can be resolved by either manually editing the
MfRequestedEndpoint value in the ESCWA configuration file, or by starting the ESCWA server with the
following command line options:BasicConfig.MfRequestedEndpoint=tcp:localhost:10086 --
write=trueReplacing "tcp:localhost:10086" with the required endpoint.
01983736 (148074)
• Timeouts and performance issues on initially loading the spool table have been mitigated by preventing
the spool table from sending an automatic request upon visiting or reloading the page. The "List" button
now needs to be pressed to trigger the load or to apply a filter. This enables you to avoiding
unnecessary requests that might timeout.
02152418 (203033)
• The ESCWA server now has improved handling of unexpected and unsupported properties in the
configuration (commonwebadmin.json by default). An unsupported property in the default configuration
file will result in the ESCWA server logging a warning, removing the property in question, and
continuing. If an unsupported property is found and the configuration has been supplied or overridden
using command line arguments, the ESCWA server will log an error and exit. This behavior can be
controlled using the new --strict-config command line argument.
(143008)
• Safety checks for POST/PUT requests with empty bodies have been improved.
(178001)
• Improved usability of IMS API endpoints by expanding property descriptions in schemas to incorporate
relevant sections and labelling from the product documentation. The improvements will enable you

Resolved Issues | 27
 correlate API to relevant UI functionality, and to discern the purpose and relevance of schema
properties in an endpoint from reading the descriptions.
00372390 (24044)
• The browser title is now set to the name of the selected enterprise server region.
00748187 (90012)
• In ESCWA, you can now download the information you can display on the JES Catalog Entry and Spool
Job Output pages. The download functionality retrieves the values starting from page 1 and is not
restricted to a page limit. Note: The download will use the Codeset and Details values as set on the
page.
00366654 (12735)
• Issue where table row buttons could be moved past the right edge of the table and made inaccessible
has been fixed. In addition, the cosmetic bug where table row separators and row highlighting did not
extend to the right edge of the table in some circumstances has been fixed.
(237046)
• In ESCWA, to switch users you now need to logoff and then log back in using the appropriate
credentials.
(101032)
• In ESCWA, incorrect instances of "Job Control Table" have been corrected to "Journal Control Table".
(87028)
• The spool table now caches the results of the last query executed and persists those results between
pages, preventing the query from being unnecessarily rerun.
02198043 (221138)
• In ESCWA on the JES Catalog page, the RECFM list now has the VBS option.
00777434 (91091)
• In ESCWA, the catalog table now displays the error or information message when ESMAC would have
display one, including when accessing a corrupt CATALOG.
00779645 (97184)
• There is no longer an issue with incorrect error/success messages when deleting a dataset without
relevant permissions in ESCWA. In this case, ESCWA now correctly handles the response from
ESMAC.
01810271 (123009)
• In ESCWA, modifying the SOR Connection Path(s) field in the Scale-Out Repository Configuration
dialog box did not update the SOR connection information. This has been fixed.
01907342 (127044)
• In ESCWA, you can now resize the columns for the Spool table.
02022132 (162025)
• Errors in the ESAdminAPI.yaml file have been fixed.
(124111)
• In ESCWA, while submitting JCL through the browser, special characters are now correctly preserved.
(91119)
• The issue where the Apply button was left disabled when changing values on a Communications
Process page has been fixed. The 'Client CA Root Certificates File' field is now correctly disabled when
'TLS Enabled' is unchecked. This will not have affected Communications Processes that had 'Client
Authentication' set to "Accept all clients" before unchecking 'TLS Enabled' as the 'Client CA Root
Certificates File' is removed under that condition.
02183154 (222089)
• In ESCWA, the Spool page no longer uses deprecated ESCWA API.

28 | Resolved Issues
 (71382)
• In ESCWA, the services table now auto resizes correctly when expanding tree elements.
(99075)
• In ESCWA on the Services page, the name fields in the Service table rows are now aligned correctly.
(62209)
• In ESCWA on the Monitor page, the graph now displays Milliseconds on the left y-axis label when it is
set to display milliseconds.
(57469)
• In ESCWA, URIMAP creation is now possible when Usage is set to Pipeline. Previously, an issue with
the field validation incorrectly set the form to be in an error state when Usage is set to Pipeline, which
disabled the Save/Apply button; the validation logic has been corrected.
01858819 (118078)
• In ESCWA, the Monitor Control page has been fixed for an enterprise server region.
(203107)
• In ESCWA, error messages can now be read by the screen reader.
01995465 (162038)
• In ESCWA, the keyboard navigation of the add widget's dialog has been improved.
02010047 (157066)
• The ESCWA UI has been re-themed to conform to Micro Focus standards. This changes the font, and
uses title case where appropriate along with many other style and color changes.
01995207 (157061)
• In ESCWA, the keyboard navigation of the tree has been improved.
02010055 (156075)
• ESCWA now supports various accessibility technologies including text-to-speech voice readers and full
keyboard-only navigation.
01995445 (163045)
• A redundant error message, triggered when shutting down ESCWA, has been removed.
00370913 (126001)
• ESCWA better reflects the status of enterprise server processes in error cases when starting and
shutdown.
02229975 (246126)
• ESCWA abended when an empty body was sent in a PUT or POST request. This has been fixed.
(175064)
• An error occurred in ESCWA when trying to log on to an enterprise server region when already logged
on. This has been fixed.
(231033)
• In ESCWA, keyboard navigation issues with tree controls have been fixed.
01995458 (157059)
• The German translation for ESCWA has been updated.
(181003)
• The Content Security Policy HTTP headers on ESCWA has been improved.
(71455)
• In ESCWA, once modifications for a security group had been saved you could not make subsequent
saves till the page was refreshed. This has been fixed.
(138140)

Resolved Issues | 29
 • When creating an ESM user, specifying a group did not add them to that group. This has been fixed.
(143028)
• In ESCWA, the display of region trace has been fixed.
(221090)
• ESCWA will now display transient SEPs on the SEP List Page.
(198051)
• The URIMap Cipher field's validation now account for xml files as permitted input.
(107003)
• In ESMAC, a new option has been added to the Control page to enable CTF to be dynamically
enabled/disabled on a started enterprise server region. See Control in your product Help for more
information.
(146114)
• ESCWA now supports displaying Queued Requests by TRANCLASS when the enterprise server region
is a member of a PAC.
(189004)
• In ESCWA on the Control page, a warning has been added above the Dynamic CTF File Location
field and to the API documentation informing you to set the CTF Action field to All Off before
changing the Dynamic CTF File Location field or the file being referenced.
(244057)
• In ESCWA, check mfcm on the ES Control page to trace the Configuration Manager. See ES Control
in your product Help for more information.
(220010)
• The Enterprise Server Administration Configuration dialog now has an External Communications
Response Timeout number picker, which is used to set the timeout for ESCWA requests that go
through MFCC. This timeout is equivalent to setting the MFC_TIMEOUT environment variable, but is
only applied on a per-request basis rather than an environment-level setting.
00502152 (76011)
• In ESCWA, on the Monitor page the graph's x-axis has been corrected to display time in order from
oldest to latest from left to right.
(158066)
• UDP sockets are now closed when not required by MFDS communications.
02181946 02193815 (222040)
• An issue with newly created Communications Processes being set to the started state but not actually
being started has been fixed.
(88221)
• The mfsecretsadmin error callback formatting has changed to improve readability and remove
unnecessary information.
(8552)
• Secrets written from now on are transferable across platforms with different endianisms.
(104103)
• In the ESMSSQL switch, version 17 calls to SQLSetConnectAttr now check both the sqlrtn code
value and the status item of the XACallParam.
(110060)
• An extraneous MQ rollback for TM processes has been fixed.
(231005)
• The DB2 switch module now provides more traces regarding CLI failures.

30 | Resolved Issues
 02202803 (239025)
• XA switches now contain logic to trace XID in the Consolidated Trace Facility (CTF).
01965103 02055821 (162072)
• The logic to parse the Open String option ESLOGGING now works correctly.
02172047 (208024)
• The Oracle switch source now has the correct data alignment to prevent RTS 114 error when more than
one Oracle XARs are specified in the enterprise server region.
01802747 (103172)
• When using ESF in Redundant mode and having multiple ESM in the relevant Security Manager List,
even though a request was successfully handled by one of the first ESM, an event failure would be
returned if the last ESM in the list reported a failure. This has now been fixed so that if the request is
successfully handled by any ESM in the list then the last ESM will not return its failure status, instead it
will be logged.
00372409 (11512)
• The MLDAP ESM, OS ESM, and PAM ESM modules now use the RACF password alphabet for
encoding short passtokens rather than the base64 alphabet.
02168078 (202221)
• The esfadmin utility is now delivered in 32 and 64-bit versions.
02182768 (218011)
• The caching mechanism of Enterprise Server's External Security Facility (ESF) is now able to cache
some requests it previously could not, such as Verify (signon) requests with long usernames or
passwords, and Auth requests for some MQ-related resources. These changes make cache records
somewhat larger, so fewer will fit in a cache of a given size. If you are using ESF caching you might
want to increase the size of your cache by 20% to 40% to account for this change if you observe a
decrease in the cache hit rate reported at enterprise server region shutdown.
02154022 (203072)
• In some configurations, Enterprise Server security could lose track of users' group membership
information in a running region or instance of MFDS after an ESF Update request. This has been fixed.
00741997 02182494 (86057)
• The validation of server certificates for SSL/TLS connections in the Micro Focus Common Client has
been improved. Specifically the standard PKIX (Public Key Infrastructure, X.509) rules are now followed
except when connecting to the server using information obtained from the Micro Focus Directory Server
(MFDS), if that information only contains an IP address and not a host name. In earlier product releases
MFCC did not enforce PKIX when using information from MFDS regardless of whether the information
included a hostname.
(52097)
• An invalid invocation of the SAFROUTE API under certain non-default configurations could cause a
divide-by-zero trap. This has been fixed.
02016793 (163052)
• The performance of the optional "prefix search optimization" feature of the MLDAP ESM Module has
been improved.
00726158 (142020)
• The External Security Facility can now optionally update the "short name" of signed-on users. See
Renaming ACEEs in your product Help for more information.
00657507 (70355)
• HSF statistics for some hexadecimal TS/TD queue names could be incorrectly reported. This has been
fixed.
(146013)

Resolved Issues | 31
 • HSF records would be missing when the task number rolled over from 99999. This has been fixed.
02026013 (165049)
• HSF records for transactions that were killed due to having exceeded a threshold would sometimes
have a response time of 0. This has been fixed.
01687237 01817975 (97116)
• When the casmgr process was recovering locks in mfdbfh, it was holding the shared memory lock.
While recovery was in progress, no other processes in the enterprise server region was able to access
shared memory. This was unnecessary and casmgr now releases the lock before initiating the
recovery.
02088479 02086462 02085808 (185024)
• A memory corruption that could occur when the monitor thread killed a process under heavy load has
been fixed.
02006375 (158087)
• New messages have been added to the console.log for startup sequences in order to be able to
troubleshoot enterprise server region startup issues.
01935739 (138172)
• If a TSQ in the SOR contained a space x'20' in the name, then the delete of the queue failed. This is
now fixed.
01829779 (182032)
• An RTS 173 occurred on an ES_mF_write_record_in_store entry point when an enterprise server
region was not in a PAC and SSTM was used. This has been fixed.
01806033 (103156)
• If a transaction executing in a PAC environment with TRANCLASS max priority active was killed by the
threshold mechanism, a hang could result on subsequent transactions executing in the same class due
to the counter not being decremented. This has now been fixed.
02168754 (209029)
• An RTS 114 occurred when a transaction had a TRANCLASS defined and the purge threshold was
reached. This has been fixed.
02144961 (204147)
• MFDBFH connections are now closed when a task is idle.
01984788 (150015)
• Enterprise Server now handles bundle manifest files that can contain multiple JSON transform
resources.
01991361 (150057)
• Latency for queued transactions in a TRANCLASS was attributed to their response times, not latency.
The latency is now correctly displayed in the latency field.
02176385 (209033)
• SCB was not being freed after normal shutdown of a transient SEP. Behavior modified to free the SCB
after this occurs to avoid issues when a SEP with the same PID is launched.
02190327 (220061)
• Loading and calling the single-threaded version of support modules within a multi-threaded process was
resulting in a hang. This has been fixed.
00779469 (92169)
• An issue with parallel one and two-phase XA connections has been fixed.
00700923 (73098)
• The XA recovery processing now supports a retry mechanism:
ES_XA_RECONNECT=Y,delay,retry_count

32 | Resolved Issues
 Where retry_count is the number of recovery retry attempts to be made if the XA verbs return an xa-
retry (04) return code. In this case, messages are sent to the console. See Environment variables
in alphabetical order in your product Help for more information.
02157658 (203087)
• The command-line utility caspac, now has the RecoverUUID action that enables you to specify the
UUID of an enterprise server region that has left the PAC. The action will remove all entries related to
that enterprise server region from the PSOR. See caspac in your product Help for more information.
(185013)
• The casToken and csrf-token security has been increased by increasing the token regeneration
frequency.
00368452 (12551)
• The performance of the ESCWA Spool View has been improved when using a database hosted catalog
file and when specifying a filter with a leading wildcard character.
01856008 (138119)
• An issue with the format of messages caused ESCWA to report success as a failure. This has been
fixed.
(125020)
• The "job user" filter string entered in ESCWA or ESMAC were being folded to upper case and
sometimes resulted in records not being displayed. This has been fixed.
00469828 (57335)
• Missing JSON properties have been added to the ESCWA active PCT API.
(222149)
• Character validation for HTTP cookie values in secure regions has been added.
02132269 (202051)
• The fix for OpenSSL Denial-of-Service (DoS) issue CVE-2022-0778 has been applied to the product.
(221130)
• When Enterprise Server's MLDAP ESM Module is used for security, with Micro Focus password hashes
and password history enabled, history entries are now created with the correct type of hash (Argon2 by
default).
(120086)
• In Enterprise Server, when using LDAP-based security, all-groups mode, and username mapping ("long
names"), if a user's group membership was changed and the esfupdate utility was invoked with the
user option to update information in the region for that user only, the user's new group membership is
now calculated correctly. Previously some of the user's groups might have been missed when
determining the set of groups.
(98040)
• For LDAP-based security with Enterprise Server, a new configuration option (password change failure)
determines whether a failed attempt to change a password causes signon to fail. See MLDAP ESM
Module Custom Configuration Information in your product Help for more information.
00736902 (99142)
• When a PAC uses Enterprise Redis, set up a custom hashing policy using the following rules:
• Rule 1: .*?\{(?<tag>.*?)\}.*
• Rule 2: (?<tag>.*)
01872664 (152015)

File Handling
Back to the list

Resolved Issues | 33
 • The mfdbcatc utility sometimes lost a directory element in a path when expanding an environment-
based pathname. This is now resolved.
00707621 (69585)
• In response to a SORT215E error, an identifier has been included to locate the fail position when the
reformatting error occurs; also, some OUTFIL variables are initialized.
01832594 (119050)
• The maximum line length of fhredir.cfg has been increased to allow for the full MFPORT/MFNODE
to be set.
01971422 01970683 (138292)
• An issue with Fileshare performance has now been resolved.
(70294)
• An issue when trying to run Fileshare in background mode has been fixed.
(101104)
• An error where incorrect results may have been returned when a READ on an alternate index was
attempted without first performing a START has now been fixed.
(138152)
• Temporary files should now be created correctly in the Data File editor when connecting to a remote file.
(92087)
• WRITE operations to variable-length output pipes are no longer being treated as fixed-record-length
WRITE operations; previously, the variable length set by a program was being ignored.
02183108 (220017)

Interface Mapping Toolkit

Back to the list
• The HWTJGTST API now returns a correct value in the JSONType parameter when invoked with the
objOrEntryValueHandle parameter set to a value of null, indicating the top of the JSON tree being
parsed.
02102661 (220107)
• COBOL clients no longer have duplicate data names in certain scenarios when the WSDL or JSON field
name is greater than 30 characters.
01815167 (111010)
• COBOL client data items now have the correct size for JSON fields with "int64" format.
01815173 (104242)

Micro Focus Common Client

Back to the list
• The Micro Focus Common Client (used by COBOL web-service proxy programs) now supports the
"gzip" content-encoding for HTTP messages. MFCC recognizes gzip'd response and request
messages, respectively.
00370460 01901934 (12322)
• A 114 Attempt to access item beyond bounds of memory (Signal 11) no longer occurs during FST101A
test.
(231036)

Micro Focus Directory Server

Back to the list

34 | Resolved Issues
• The MFDS TLS redirect code has been hardened to improve security.
01938276 02124054 02232906 (157050)
• If a shortened hostname fails to resolve, then resolution of the full hostname is attempted.
02207755 (240012)
• If there is a problem resolving the machine local hostname the MFDS process will display the following
startup failure message rather than a "Bind fail=136" message:"CCITCP2-0252E hostname resolution
error."
(221047)
• On import of an MFDS repository, some configuration types (such as XRM and MQ Listener) were
double-counted, which could result in the configured object limit being breached even though the
number of imported items did not exceed it.
(202284)
• The status of whether the vault is enabled and in use by the MFDS process was not displayed in the
MFDS Web user interface as it was in Visual COBOL and Enterprise Developer 5.0. This has been
fixed.
(217031)
• The MFDS process could hang if too many enterprise server regions were defined and started. This
has been fixed.
02190282 (222092)
• MPR PWFI support has been added to MFDS via the mfIMSMPRPWFIDispatch MLDAP API MPR
property.
(80014)
• In ESCWA, an error would occur when trying to modify a listener on a communications server other
than the first. This has been fixed.
02191654 (222078)
• There is no longer a long delay when attempting to shut down an enterprise server region that is
retrying an ISC connection.
01689657 OCTCR50A193010 OCTCR50A181100 (101059)

Micro Focus License Administration

Back to the list
• In a system where many licensed processes are attempting to get responses from the mfcesd daemon,
it is possible for the underlying system kernel to constrain resources used by the UNIX domain sockets.
This can cause the send response to fail with a resource unavailable temporarily error. This caused the
ces daemon to lose its contact with the requesting client, resulting in a hung client process.
The CES daemon now recognizes this temporary constraint condition and throttles the connection
slightly and retries. The daemon now always sends a response to the client process.
Micro Focus recommends that you also tune the kernel parameters shown below to allow more
resources for a heavily used system, to prevent the underlying condition.
The following examples show the parameters to change and show very high values. Micro Focus
recommends that a network expert or an administrator reviews these values and adjusts them to
achieve a sensible balance:
# Increase number of incoming connections

net.core.somaxconn = 65535

# Increase number of incoming connections backlog

net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 65535

Resolved Issues | 35
 02196423 (245004)
• Before performing a Repair of the Visual COBOL installer, Micro Focus recommends that you create
backups of any configuration files of the product that you might have changed.
02084082 (227001)

Micro Focus Support

Back to the list
• The mfpoll.txt file now includes a new section that has information about whether the machine the
mfsupport script is running on is a Virtual Machine or a physical one.
00466174 (59146)

Panels
Back to the list
• Windows 10 Console Windows resizing has different behavior than some previous releases where the
screen buffer size was constantly resized. Some applications, such as a COBOL Accept/Display
applications, depend on this behavior, which uses a fixed line and column format. To work around this
problem, enable legacy mode in the Console's properties. This disables automatic window resizing. If
legacy mode is not enabled, the screen buffer resize event is captured and the window is resized back
to the original size, which causes some flickering.
02179388 (212008)

Run-time System
Back to the list
• There was an issue in the internal logic of the cobutf8 utility, which could have resulted in a hang
when a very large amount of data was converted to the application's input and the application was
unable to process the data quickly enough. This has now been fixed.
02115599 (190051)
• If a shared object was created with cob -z -d symbol_name -l shared_library, where
symbol_name is resolved in the shared library linked into the shared object, then a potential SIGSEGV
sometimes occurred when the shared object was unloaded. This has been resolved.
01848664 (118012)
• Issues relating to MFDBFH after a recoverable error that occurs in Enterprise Server have been
resolved.
(97119)
• The -U option of the Micro Focus Configuration Utility for the Microsoft Build Tools and SDK (command
name: cblms) now works correctly if it specifies both a path and a version.
(86023)
• A memory stomp, which was caused by text wrapping code when multi-byte characters were used, has
been fixed.
02175685 (208014)
• A memory leak caused by alias symbols has been resolved.
01912000 (146043)
• Code has been removed that assumed that Disk space exhausted was the only failure mode for a
disk write operation. It has been replaced with a query of errno when a write operation fails to output
the expected number of bytes (so the run-time system now copes as well as the operating system
does).
01978959 (195086)

36 | Resolved Issues
• Previously, it was not possible to use the old Microsoft bitmap fonts such as Courier, MS Serif and MS
Sans Serif with the PC_PRINTER_SET_FONT library routine. This has now been corrected.
Note: Helvetica and Times fonts are no longer available on Windows, and Arial and Times New
Roman fonts should be used instead.
02011925 (160003)
• When using the PC_PRINTER_DRAW_RECTANGLE library routine, if box-style is set to 1 (filled),
and no pen has been set using PC_PRINTER_SET_PEN, the rectangle fill will be solid black.
(127027)

Setup
Back to the list
• Before installing the 8.0 version of COBOL Server, COBOL Server 64-bit, Visual COBOL Build Tools, or
Visual COBOL Build Tools 64-bit, you must uninstall the corresponding 7.0 product.
(258023)
• This release no longer requires Microsoft's Visual C++ 2013 redistributable.
00486278 (71117)

SQL: COBSQL
Back to the list
• COBSQL now exits when the CA-DB precompiler is specified but not installed.
(9638)
• The SQLBGP option has been added to the IDE.
(138181)
• The COBSQL preprocessor has been modified to insert Procedure Division Initialization logic after each
ENTRY statement.
01780938 (118075)

SQL: DB2 ECM

Back to the list
• A new exit for ESXACUSTOMEXT has been added to the DB2 switch module. The build scripts have also
been updated with some new options to enable this logic.
01688275 (104007)
• For custom exits, the XA-inquiry block must now be specified in the LINKAGE SECTION in the custom
exit sources.
02170335 (204264)
• A problem with compiling VARCHAR or LONG VARCHAR arrays in a COBOL SQL program sometimes
has been resolved.
02105414 (152006)
• A COBOLprogram using EXEC SQL INSERT or FETCH statements without a FOR N ROWS clause
with arrays caused compiler errors. This has been resolved.
(155003)

SQL: OpenESQL
Back to the list

Resolved Issues | 37
 • A problem that prevented the ESMSSQL switch from detecting when the PIP1 transaction is occurring
caused setCurrentConnection to be performed on the incorrect connection. This has been fixed.
01916096 (142006)
• OpenESQL has been modified to process RELEASE TO SAVEPOINT statements in RDBMSs.
00370819 (13104)
• A problem that caused the OpenESQL native runtime to incorrectly handle WITH HOLD FOR UPDATE
cursor against Oracle in 64-bit has been fixed.
00745593 (121047)
• OpenESQL now supports a SYNC clause specified in a variable-length host variable declaration.
02169632 (204218)
• The default READ-ONLY cursor in SQL CLR Stored Procedures is now opened as a FAST FORWARD
cursor.
01817107 (113027)
• A problem that prevented a properly executed EXEC SQL statement from returning the correct
RETURN-CODE has been fixed.
02036138 (167041)
• A problem that caused the OpenESQL runtime to incorrectly handle SQLDA when the .NET SQL
application used the ODBC driver has been fixed.
01993609 (158003)
• A problem that sometimes prevented an XA connection used with dynamic registration from working
properly with MFDBFH with has been fixed.
00779680 (146073)
• A problem with compiling an EXEC SQL statement of DECLARE CURSOR in which CTE starts with
SELECT * has been resolved.
01798310 (105107)
• A problem that occurred when using CTE in SELECT INTO statement has been corrected.
02117758 (194003)
• When an error occurs, the get error loop now exits if the last error message retrieved is the same as the
current one.
02172041 (209005)

Visual Studio Code

Back to the list
• You no longer receive a Null Reference exception when running MicroFocus.VSCodeJIT.exe /r
on machines that do not have Visual COBOL or Enterprise Developer for Visual Studio installed.
01855303 (120034)

Visual Studio IDE

Back to the list
• There is no longer an issue with setting the source format to Fixed for .NET COBOL Core and .NET
COBOL Standard projects.
01763326 (104079)
• Right-clicking on an element in a group item or table in the Watch window in Visual Studio no longer
results in an error.
(158134)

38 | Resolved Issues
• The Windows system folder is now excluded from build dependency checking. This is to avoid full
rebuilds from occurring when building projects after you have installed any Windows updates.
02173365 (222086)
• A performance issue when stepping through native code in the debugger when the memory window is
visible and showing an invalid address has been resolved.
(182090)
• The console log for an enterprise server was not displayed correctly in Visual Studio when the server
was started using different credentials, for example from the Enterprise Server Common Web
Administration.
(236006)
• Dialog boxes displayed when using menu options in the Micro Focus Servers nodes in Server
Explorer now display correctly when the environment font used by Visual Studio is changed.
(167021)
• The code analysis results highlighting is now shown in the correct position within source lines that
contain tabs.
(91125)
• If the Determine Directives command cannot identify the dialect for a source file, any file-level dialect
override for that file is preserved.
02191877 (246123)
• The CoreDump profile for native COBOL projects now correctly launches the selected core file.
(124048)
• An issue with the case sensitive string check when attempting to launch an "Executable" debug profile
of a .NET COBOL project has been resolved.
01906352 (132008)
• When debugging through .NET Code, an Edit and Continue dialog box could appear that never
completed and could not be cancelled requiring the Visual Studio process to be terminated. This has
been fixed.
(158107)
• You can now select multiple test cases (using the usual Ctrl and Shift techniques) and click Run
Selected to perform a test run of specific test cases.
Note: This option is not supported for individual data-driven test cases.

(6435)
• The Auto-generate binding redirects project property is now supported for .NET Framework
applications
01850991 (131016)

Resolved Issues | 39
 Other Issues Resolved in This Release
The numbers listed are the Support Incident Numbers followed by the Defect number (in parentheses).
• 02150403 (203019)
• 02091353 (187001)
• 02121754 (202065)
• 02132897 02164401 (198046)
• 01995392 (158073)
• 02010044 (157065)
• 2836772 (7336)
• 02293789 (226006)
• 01912000 (142033)
• 01834420 (98086)
• 00620699 (71289)
• 01811748 (124010)
• 02135207 (193101)
• 02051091 (175018)
• 00725550 (92178)
• 01839124 02145513 (112009)
• 02045736 (166043)
• 01947033 (146111)
• 01994995 (195081)
• 02033743 (161099)
• 02110007 (191044)
• 02289051 (258146)
• 01794492 (105047)
• 00430214 (58005)
• 02254118 (253027)
• 02016027 (163039)
• 00367290 (31077)
• 01862519 (118040)
• 3188835 (11348)
• 00365049 (13049)
• 02161981 (204198)
• (259026)
• 00775199 (218016)
• (259059)
• (244058)

40 | Other Issues Resolved in This Release

Unsupported Functionality
This section includes information about features or functionality that are not supported.
• The HOSTSIGNS Compiler directive is no longer supported. Micro Focus recommends that you use the
following Compiler directives instead: SIGN-FIXUP, HOST-NUMMOVE, and HOST-NUMCOMPARE.
This is a change since version 3.0 of this product.

Unsupported Functionality | 41
 Additional Software Requirements
To ensure full functionality for some Visual COBOL features, you might be required to obtain and install
additional third-party software.
See this information on the Product Documentation pages on Micro Focus Customer Care, in the product
help for Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2017 (click here), Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2019 (click
here), or Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2022 (click here).

42 | Additional Software Requirements

Installation

Before Installing

Downloading the Product

1. Log into the Software Licenses and Downloads (SLD) site at https://sld.microfocus.com/mysoftware/
download/downloadCenter.
2. Select your account and click Entitlements.
3. Search for the product by using any of the available search parameters.
4. Click Show all entitlements.
5. Click Get Software in the Action column for the product you want to download or update.
In the File Type column, you see entries for "Software" for any GA products, and "Patch" for any patch
updates.
6. Click Download on the relevant row.

On Windows
System Requirements
Hardware Requirements
Visual COBOL has the following requirements in addition to the requirements of Microsoft Visual Studio.
See the Visual Studio documentation for details of the Microsoft requirements.
The maximum disk space requirements are, approximately:

Visual COBOL Sentinel RMS License Manager

1.2Gb 75MB

• This includes the space needed to cache information locally so that you can modify the installation
without the original source media.
• The disk space requirements include the versions of JRE and .NET Framework supplied with the setup
file.

Operating Systems Supported

For a list of supported operating systems, see Supported Operating Systems and Third-party Software in
your product documentation.
Note:
• A 64-bit Windows is required. You can produce both 32-bit and 64-bit applications with Visual
COBOL installed on a 64-bit operating system.

Installation | 43
 Software Requirements
The setup file will check your machine for whether the prerequisite software is installed and will install any
missing prerequisites and the product components. A supported version of Microsoft's Visual Studio must
be installed in advance.
Besides the software listed below, the setup file also installs the 64-bit AdoptOpenJDK 11.0.8 (LTS) with
Hotspot.
This product includes OpenSSL version 1.1.1n-mf6 (modified).
• Visual Studio IDE
• Selecting the Visual Studio components to install
• Installing Visual Studio features that are not currently installed
• License Manager requirements
• Other Requirements

Visual Studio IDE

You must have Microsoft's Visual Studio 2017 version 15.9 or a newer one, or 2019 version 16.11 or a
newer one, or 2022 version 17.0 or a newer one installed in advance. SQL CLR in Visual Studio 2022
requires version 17.1 or newer.
Note: Problems with Microsoft's Visual Studio 2022, release 17.2, might cause issues with some of
the functionality in Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2022. See Known Issues for details.
You need one of the advanced versions of Visual Studio listed below:

Professional, Enterprise or Community Edition (for Visual Studio 2017) - see the next section for the
Visual Studio components you must install.
Professional, Enterprise or Community Edition (for Visual Studio 2019) - see the next section for the
Visual Studio components you must install.
Professional, Enterprise or Community Edition (for Visual Studio 2022) - see the next section for the
Visual Studio components you must install.

Microsoft's Visual Studio Express Edition is not supported.

Important:
• When installing Visual Studio, ensure you select the Help Viewer component for installing if you
want to view the Visual COBOL product help inside Visual Studio. When you select components to
install in the Visual Studio installer, click Individual components and check Help Viewer in the
Code tools section.
The following software is also required:
• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2. This is included with Visual Studio.

Selecting the Visual Studio components to install

The Visual Studio installer enables you to customize and only install the workloads and components that
are most suitable for your area of development. For example, you can select the components that are
required for .NET desktop development, ASP.NET Web or C++ development.
If not already installed, the Visual COBOL setup file will install the following components:
• .NET Framework version 4.7.2.
• Debugger
• Data services
A number of workloads and components are optional and only required by specific types of applications or
tasks:

44 | Installation
• Azure, WCF, Web, WPF or SQL CLR application development.
If you require any of these, you can select them when you start the Visual Studio installer or, enable them
after completing the installation - see the next section.

Installing Visual Studio features that are not currently installed

If a feature of Visual Studio was not installed during the Visual Studio installation, the respective
functionality or the project templates for it are not available. You can install a missing feature in one of the
following ways:
Rerun the Visual Studio installer:
1. Start the Visual Studio installer and choose to modify an existing Visual Studio instance.
2. Select the workloads and the components that are missing (for example, ASP.NET and web
development or Help Viewer).
3. Start the Visual Studio installation.
Use the Quick Launch control in Visual Studio:
1. Start Visual Studio.
2. Type the name of the feature in the Quick Launch control - for example, type ASP.NET or Help
Viewer.
A drop-down list with any features matching your search string appears. If the feature is not already
installed, one of the search results will be an option to install it.
Use the Install Missing Feature(s) command in Visual Studio:
1. Start Visual Studio.
2. Click Help > Micro Focus Product Help > Install Missing Feature(s) > Feature Name.
Follow the instructions in the installer to install the missing feature.
3. Alternatively, if a Micro Focus project template requires a Visual Studio feature which is not currently
installed, the IDE displays an information bar with instructions to install the feature.

License Manager requirements

• The Micro Focus License Administration tool requires Java to run. It supports Java 1.7 or later.
• For local servers, you do not need to install the Micro Focus License Administration tool separately, as
the setup file installs a new Visual COBOL client and a new licensing server on the same machine.
• If you have any network license servers, you must update them before you update the client machines.
• If you are upgrading from Visual COBOL release 2.2 or earlier, uninstall the license manager before
installing the product.
You can download the new version of the license server software by following these steps:
1. Log into the Software Licenses and Downloads (SLD) site at https://sld.microfocus.com/mysoftware/
download/downloadCenter.
2. Select your account and click Downloads.
3. Select a product and a product version from your orders.
4. In the list of software downloads, locate the License Manager.
5. Click Download to download an archive with the installers.
6. Run the installer suitable for your Operating System to install License Manager on your machine.

Other Requirements
Various actions and operations within your COBOL development environment depend on certain files that
Microsoft distributes in the following packages: the Windows SDK package and the Microsoft Build Tools
package. See Microsoft Package Dependencies for a full list of actions and operations that require one or
both of these packages.

Installation | 45
 By default, the product installation installs the latest versions of the Microsoft Windows 10 SDK, and the
Microsoft Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017, to their default locations.
If you need to use any other version of these packages, or use them installed to a non-default location, use
the cblms command line utility post-installation to manage this; see Managing the Microsoft Build Tools
and Windows SDK Packages for more information.

Product Co-Existence
• Visual COBOL and COBOL Server cannot coexist on the same machine.
• Visual COBOL and Enterprise Developer cannot coexist on the same machine regardless of which IDE
(Visual Studio or Eclipse) you install.

Installation Restrictions and Requirements

Before starting the installation you should consider the following:
• If, when you install Visual COBOL, the machine does not have Microsoft Visual C++ 2017
Redistributable Runtime already installed, it is installed as required by Visual COBOL. The installation of
Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Runtime adds a number of .dll files, without digital signatures,
into the winsxs directory.
• You need to be logged in with a user-ID that has write access to the registry structure under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, and HKEY_CURRENT_USER so the installation
software can set the environment appropriately. You also need to be logged on with Administrator
privileges.
• Various actions and operations within your COBOL development environment depend on certain
Microsoft files distributed in the following packages: the Windows SDK package and the Microsoft Build
Tools package. By default, a standard product installation downloads and installs these. Refer to
Microsoft Package Dependencies to see if these packages are required. If you do not plan to use your
development tool in a way that will depend on any of these packages, you can run a non-standard
installation, which will skip their download and installation, thus saving disk space and time taken for
installation. Refer to Advanced Installation Tasks for details on the available installation options.
• If you already have Microsoft Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017 installed, you must ensure that it
contains the Visual C++ build tools workload (or at least the individual components contained in that
workload) before you run this installation.

Basic Installation
The instructions in this section apply when you are performing a basic installation of this product for the
first time. If you are an administrator, you can perform a basic installation on a local machine before
performing a more advanced installation when rolling out the product to developers within your
organization.
For considerations when installing this product as an upgrade, for additional installation options or non-
default installations, see Advanced Installation Tasks in your product Help.

Installing
Note:
• This version of the product is a full install.
• See Before Installing first for important information. Also, see Installing as an Upgrade, if you have
an earlier version of Visual COBOL installed on your machine.
To install this product:

46 | Installation
 1. Run the vcvs2017_80.exe file (or vcvs2019_80.exe for Visual Studio 2019, or vcvs2022_80.exe
for Visual Studio 2022) and follow the wizard instructions to install the prerequisite software and the
product.
Note:
• If you are installing onto a machine that has an existing Micro Focus product that uses an older
Sentinel RMS License Manager, you might be prompted to remove it and install the Micro Focus
License Administration. By doing this you maintain the existing Sentinel RMS license files while
adding the Micro Focus License Administration. If you are unsure about existing licenses on your
computer or removing the Sentinel RMS License Manager, consult your System Administrator. If
you want to proceed, remove Sentinel RMS License Manager by using Program and Features,
and rerun the installation file.
• Depending on how you plan to use the product, there could be dependencies on the Microsoft
Windows SDK and Microsoft Build Tools packages. The installer will install the latest versions of
the Microsoft Windows 10 SDK, and the Microsoft Build Tools for Visual Studio 2017, to their
default locations. Refer to Microsoft Package Dependencies to see if you will require these
packages, and if not, you can configure the installer to skip download and installation (see
Advanced Installation Tasks for more information).
• Trial licenses cannot be used with remote desktop services. If you want to use your product in this
way, please contact Micro Focus Customer Care to obtain a relevant license.
• We recommend that you install any updates for Visual Studio and the .NET Framework that are
available at the Microsoft Download site.
• If you install JDK you might be prompted to install the latest update. The latest update is not
required for use with Visual COBOL but you can install it if you wish.

Advanced Installation Tasks

This section includes instructions about how to perform a non-default installation, install this product as an
upgrade, or about how to install the additional components.
The advanced installation tasks include:
• Installing as an Upgrade - included in these Release Notes
• Command line installation options - included in these Release Notes
• Installing on Microsoft Terminal Server and Citrix - available in the product Help and on the Product
Documentation pages on Micro Focus Customer Care
See this information on the Product Documentation pages on Micro Focus Customer Care, in the product
help for Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2017 (click here), Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2019 (click
here), and Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2022 (click here).

On Windows
Installing as an Upgrade
Installing this release as an upgrade will automatically uninstall any Patch Updates of the older version of
the product you have installed on your machine.
• This release can be installed as an upgrade to Visual COBOL 7.0.
• Before installing this release as an upgrade, ensure you create a back-up of your Enterprise Server
configuration. To do this, on the Enterprise Server Administration home page, click Export and then
select Export Enterprise Server configuration and Security Manager definitions. This creates a
backup folder in the c:\programdata\micro focus\Enterprise Developer\MFDS. You can
restore the Enterprise Server configuration after installing this release - click Import on the Enterprise
Server Administration home page.

Installation | 47
 Visual COBOL Installation Options
To install Visual COBOL you run vcvs2017_80.exe which contains a number of product .msi files
(Windows Installer packages). When run, vcvs2017_80.exe performs some initial system checks then
sequentially installs the .msi files.
Note: The following applies to vcvs2019_80.exe when installing the product for Visual Studio 2019,
and to vcvs2022_80.exe when installing the product for Visual Studio 2022.
vcvs2017_80.exe can take a number of parameters, enabling you to specify a number of different types
of installation:
• Standard Installation

Format:
vcvs2017_80.exe
Summary:
Full installation including License Manager and Visual COBOL. During installation you can specify
options including the location to which the components are installed.
• Non-standard Installation

Format:
vcvs2017_80.exe skipmstools=1
Summary:
Full installation, minus the Microsoft package dependencies. A standard installation downloads and
installs the latest Microsoft Build Tools (for Visual Studio 2017) and Windows SDK packages. Refer
to Microsoft Package Dependencies to see if you will depend on these packages, and if not, use the
option above to skip installation of the packages, thus reducing the footprint and duration of the
installation process.
• Non-interactive Installation

Format:
vcvs2017_80.exe /passive
Summary:
Full installation, but the components are installed non-interactively using default options and
directories.
• Silent Installation

Format:
start /wait vcvs2017_80.exe /q
Summary:
Full installation, but the components are installed non-interactively with no user interface, using
default options and directories.
• Modified Silent Installation

Format:
start /wait vcvs2017_80.exe /q InstallFolder=d:\otherdirectory
Summary:
Full installation, but the components are installed non-interactively with no user interface, and Visual
COBOL is installed to d:\otherdirectory.
To see what parameters you can use, execute the following from the command line:
vcvs2017_80.exe /?.
Note:

48 | Installation
 • Log files that are created during installation are saved in the folder specified by the TEMP
environment variable. To change the location or name of the files, use the /log parameter on your
setup command line and specify the path and file name, for example: filename /log d:\temp
\log.txt. This creates a log file, named log.txt, in the d:\temp directory.

After Installing
• See Changes in Behavior or Usage in your product documentation and in the Release Notes for
important information about changes in this release that might affect existing applications.
• Check the Product Documentation section of the Micro Focus Customer Support Documentation Web
site for any documentation updates.

On Windows
Starting the Product
You are now ready to run Visual COBOL - for example, for Visual Studio 2017:

Windows 10 • From your Windows desktop, click Start > Visual Studio 2017.

Windows 11 • Click the Start button in the Task Bar. Use the search field in the Start menu to find and
start Visual Studio 2017.

Managing the Microsoft Build Tools and Windows SDK Packages

There are a number of COBOL development features that depend on the Microsoft Build Tools and
Windows SDK packages. By default, the product installer downloads and installs these packages to their
default locations. The installer then sets your COBOL environment to depend on those downloaded
versions.
You can use the Microsoft Build Tools and Windows SDK Packages configuration utility - cblms - to view
which versions are in use, and also configure your COBOL environment if you require something other
than the standard usage.
For example, some project types (for example, .NET Core) require a different version of the Microsoft Build
Tools (the Visual Studio 2019 version) than the one installed (the Visual Studio 2017 version). If you have
already installed the correct version for .NET, run cblms after product installation, to update your
environment to use the correct package.
There is an option within the product installer to skip the installation of the default packages
(skipmstools=1); however, this does skip both packages, so make sure that you do already have the
package(s) that you require before setting this - see Microsoft Package Dependencies for details on the
package(s) you may require.

The Microsoft Build Tools and Windows SDK Configuration Utility

Use the cblms command line utility to view and set the package versions in effect for your COBOL environment.
Important: If you are updating or clearing package versions, you must run this utility from a command
prompt with administrative privileges.

Syntax:
cblms <option>

Installation | 49
 Parameters:
Note: <option> settings are case insensitive.

<option> can be one of:

-U
Updates the COBOL environment to use the latest versions of the Microsoft Build Tools
and SDK packages that are located in the default folders. Any open IDE instance or
command prompt must be restarted before these changes take effect.
-U<ms-pkg>
Updates the COBOL environment to use the latest version of the particular package type
that is located in the default folder. Any open IDE instance or command prompt must be
restarted before these changes take effect.
-U<ms-pkg>:<version>
Updates the COBOL environment to use a specific version of the particular package type
that is located in the default folder.Any open IDE instance or command prompt must be
restarted before these changes take effect.
-U<ms-pkg>:<path>
Updates the COBOL environment to use the latest version of the particular package type
that is located in the (non-default) folder specified. Any open IDE instance or command
prompt must be restarted before these changes take effect.
-U<ms-pkg>:<path>?<version>
Updates the COBOL environment to use a specific version of the particular package type
that is located in the (non-default) folder specified. Any open IDE instance or command
prompt must be restarted before these changes take effect.
-L
Lists all versions of the Microsoft Build Tools and SDK packages that are located in the
default folders.
-L<ms-pkg>
Lists all versions of a particular package type that are located in the default folder.
-L<ms-pkg>:<path>
Lists all versions of a particular package type that are located in the (non-default) folder
specified.
-Q
Displays the versions currently in use by the COBOL environment.
-Q<ms-pkg>
Displays the version of the selected package type that is currently in use by the COBOL
environment.
-R
Clears all version information. (Only use this option when instructed to by Customer Care.)
-H
Displays the available command line options.

Legend:

<ms-pkg> <ms-pkg> can be one of S or SDK for the Microsoft SDK, or B or BT for the Microsoft Build
Tools.

50 | Installation
<path> <path> is the path in which to locate packages that are not installed to the default location for
their package type.
<version> <version> is the package version with which to update when the latest version is not the one
required. When specifying version, it must be in the form:
• n.n.n.n for a Windows SDK
• n.n.n for Build Tools
• n for list ID - the list ID is displayed using cblms -L.

The following example updates the COBOL environment to use version 10.0.17134.0 of
the Windows 10 SDK, installed in C:\WinSDK\10.
cblms -USDK:C:\WinSDK\10\10.0.17134.0

Viewing the Product Help

Visual COBOL is configured to display the product help available online on the Micro Focus Customer Care
website: https://www.microfocus.com/support-and-services/documentation/.
You can view the product help in one of the following ways:

Online help (default)

Note:
• Your Visual Studio must be configured to show online help by default. Make sure Help > Set Help
Preferences in Visual Studio points to Launch in Browser.
• Ensure that you have an up-to-date version of your browser.
You can access the Help in one of the following ways:
• Click Help > Micro Focus Product Help > Product Documentation.
• Alternatively, press F1 inside the editor or from a UI part.
This opens the Visual COBOL help or Microsoft's MSDN depending on which keyword in the editor or
part of the UI you are querying.

Local help
Note: If you've had an earlier version of Visual COBOL installed on your machine, you need to
uninstall any older version of the documentation as follows:
1. Click Help > Add and Remove Content inside Visual Studio.
This starts the Microsoft Help Viewer.
2. Click the Manage Content tab and click Disk.
3. Click Remove next to the line for the Visual COBOL documentation.
4. Click Update.
The local help is not shipped with the installer. If you prefer to view the help locally on your machine, you
need to download and install it manually as described below.
1. Download the local help files:
a. Find the download link for local help in your Electronic Product Download email or in the Product
Updates section on the Micro Focus Customer Care website and save the files on your machine.
b. Expand the archive on your machine. Ensure that the .msha and the .cab files are in the same
folder.

Installation | 51
 2. Ensure that the Visual Studio Help Viewer is installed:
a. Click Help inside Visual Studio.
If no View Help command is available, you need to install the Help Viewer manually. See Installing
missing components of Visual Studio in Software Requirements for instructions on how to install it.
3. Install the help in the Help Viewer:
a. Click Help > Add and Remove Content inside Visual Studio.
This starts the Microsoft Help Viewer.
b. Click the Manage Content tab and click Disk.
c. Click the browse button next to Disk and navigate to the folder in which you extracted the local help
files.
d. Select helpcontentsetup.msha and click Open.
This loads the Visual COBOL documentation.
e. Click Add and then Update.
After the installation is complete, the Visual COBOL product Help appears in the Help Viewer.
4. Configure Visual Studio to use local help:
a. Start Visual Studio.
b. Ensure that the Visual Studio Help Library is pointing to local help - from the Visual Studio menu
click Help > Set Help Preferences > Launch in Help Viewer.
c. Click Help > View Help.
This opens the product help in Microsoft's Help Viewer.
For full details of the Visual Studio Help system, see the MSDN.
Note: On some Windows versions, an issue with Microsoft Help Viewer and Internet Explorer's
security being turned on can cause the Help content to be displayed as raw HTML code. To
resolve the issue, you need to turn off the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration
(IE ESC) for both administrators and users. Check the Microsoft Windows help for more
information on how to do this.

Repairing
If any product files, registry settings or shortcuts are accidentally removed at any point, you can perform a
repair on the installation to replace them.
To repair your installation:
1. From the Control Panel, click Uninstall a program under Programs.
2. Right-click your Micro Focus product and select Repair.

Uninstalling
To uninstall the product, you cannot simply delete its files from your hard disk. To uninstall the product:
1. Log in with the same user-ID as you used when you installed the product.
2. Click Uninstall a program under Programs in Control Panel.
3. Select the product and click Remove or Uninstall as appropriate.
During the uninstall process, only those files added during the installation (to the installation and Samples
directories) are removed. If the installation installed the Microsoft Windows 10 SDK or Microsoft Build Tools
packages, these are left in place, although the Micro Focus-related registry entries for these packages are
removed.
If the product directory has not been removed, delete any unwanted files and subdirectories within it using
Windows Explorer.

52 | Installation
 Note: The installer creates separate installations for Micro Focus Visual COBOL Micro Focus
Analysis Services Integration, and Micro Focus License Administration. Uninstalling only Visual
COBOL does not automatically uninstall the Micro Focus License Administration or any of the
prerequisite software.
To completely remove the product you must uninstall the Micro Focus License Administration as well.
You can optionally remove the prerequisite software. For instructions, check the documentation of the
respective software vendor.
Some registry entries are not removed by the uninstallation process and you need to manually delete
them.
The following folders might not be removed:
• The Micro Focus Product Name folder in the Start menu - you can delete it manually.
• %systemdrive%\Users\Public\Documents\Micro Focus - includes the binaries and the log
files of the samples which you have built.
• %ProgramData%\Micro Focus - includes some data files used by the Micro Focus licensing system.
• %Program Files%\Micro Focus - you can delete it manually.
To silently uninstall the product, you need the setup file and you need to execute the following at the
command line:
start /wait install-file.exe /quiet /uninstall

In addition, the following registry entries are not removed. These are created the first time that an
Enterprise Server that has been enabled for performance monitoring starts up:
• Micro Focus Server\Performance\Active Servers
• Micro Focus Server\Performance\PerfIniFile

Installation | 53
 Licensing Information
Note:
• Personal Edition licensing is only available with Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2022.
• When you activate Visual COBOL Personal Edition, you can use it for a limited period of 365 days.
After this period, you can either register a new Personal Edition license for 365 days or acquire a
valid full license of Visual COBOL in order to continue using the product.
• If you have purchased licenses for a previous release of this product, those licenses will also
enable you to use this release.
• The latest version of the SafeNet licensing software is required. See the Software Requirements
section in this document for more details.
• If you are unsure of what your license entitlement is or if you wish to purchase additional licenses,
contact your sales representative or Micro Focus Customer Care.

To activate Visual COBOL Personal Edition

To activate Personal Edition:
1. Start Visual COBOL.
If you have not installed a license for Visual COBOL, starting the IDE and trying to create a COBOL
project opens the Micro Focus Visual COBOL Product Licensing dialog box. If you cancel this dialog
box, you can invoke it again from Help > Micro Focus Product Help > Product Licensing.
2. Copy the authorization code which you were sent after registering for Personal Edition, and paste it into
the Authorization code field.
3. Click Finish.
You should receive a message that the activation has been successful.

To buy and activate a full unlimited license

To buy a license for Visual COBOL, contact your sales representative or Micro Focus Customer Care.
For instructions on using the Micro Focus Licensing Administration Tool, see Licensing in the Visual
COBOL help.

To start Micro Focus License Administration

To start the GUI Micro Focus License Administration

Windows 10 From your Windows desktop, click Start > Micro Focus License Manager > License
Administration.
Windows 11 Click the Start button in the Task Bar. Use the search field in the Start menu to find and
start License Administration.

54 | Licensing Information
 To start the command-line Micro Focus License Administration tool
1. At a command prompt, navigate to:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Micro Focus\Licensing
2. Type cesadmintool.bat, and press Enter.

Installing licenses
You need either a license file (with a .mflic extension for Sentinel RMS licenses or an .xml extension for
AutoPass licenses) or an authorization code which consists of a string of 16 alphanumeric characters
(Sentinel RMS licenses only). You need to install AutoPass licenses into the existing Micro Focus License
Administration tool, and not in the AutoPass License Server.

If you have a license file

To use the GUI Micro Focus License Administration
1. Start Micro Focus License Administration.
2. Click the Install tab.
3. Do one of the following:
• Click Browse next to the License file field and select the license file (which has an extension
of .mflic or .xml).
• Drag and drop the license file from Windows Explorer to the License file field.
4. Click Install Licenses.
Alternatively, you can install the license file from within the IDE as follows:
1. Start Visual COBOL.
2. Click Help > Micro Focus Product Help > Product Licensing to open the Product Licensing dialog
box.
3. Ensure I have a full Visual COBOL license is checked.
4. Click Browse next to the License file field.
5. Select the license file (which has an extension of either .mflic or .xml), and then click Open.
6. Click Authorize to install the license.
You should see a dialog box with a confirmation that the licenses have been installed successfully.

To use the command-line Micro Focus License Administration tool

1. Start the command-line Micro Focus License Administration tool.
2. Select the Manual License Installation option by entering 4.
3. Enter the name and location of the license file.

If you have an authorization code

Note: Authorization codes are only available with Sentinel RMS licensing.

Authorizing your product when you have an Internet connection

Note:
• This topic only applies if you have an authorization code. Authorization codes are only available
with Sentinel RMS licensing.

Licensing Information | 55
 • It is not possible to install licenses remotely. You must be logged into the machine on which you
are installing the licenses.
The following procedure describes how to authorize your product using a local or network license server.
The license server is set up automatically when you first install the product.

To use the GUI Micro Focus License Administration

1. Start Micro Focus License Administration.
2. Click the Install tab.
3. Type the authorization code in the Enter authorization code field.
4. Click Authorize.
If you change the name of the machine running your license server after it has granted licenses, the
licenses stop working.

To use the command-line Micro Focus License Administration tool

1. Start the command-line Micro Focus License Administration tool.
2. Select the Online Authorization option by entering 1 and pressing Enter.
3. Enter your authorization code at the Authorization Code prompt and then press Enter.

Authorizing your product when you don't have an Internet connection

Note: This topic only applies if you have an authorization code. Authorization codes are only available
with Sentinel RMS licensing.
This method of authorization is required if the machine you want to license does not have an Internet
connection or if normal (automatic) authorization fails.

To use the GUI Micro Focus License Administration

1. Start Micro Focus License Administration.
2. On the Install tab, click Manual Authorization.
3. Make a note of the contents of the Machine ID field. You will need this later.
4. Do one of the following:
• If your machine has an Internet connection, click the Customer Care Web link in the Manual
Authorization Information window.
• If your machine does not have an Internet connection, make a note of the Web address and type it
into a Web browser on a machine that has an Internet connection.
The Micro Focus Customer Care Manual product authorization Web page is displayed.
5. Type the authorization code in the Authorization Code field. The authorization code is a 16-character
alphanumeric string supplied when you purchased your product.
6. Type the Machine ID in the Machine ID field.
7. Type your email address in the Email Address field.
8. Click Generate.
9. Copy the generated license string (or copy it from the email) and paste it into the box under the License
file field on the Install page.
10.Click Install Licenses.

To use the command-line Micro Focus License Administration tool

In order to authorize your product from the command-line Micro Focus License Administration tool you
must have the following:
• Access to a computer which is connected to the Internet.

56 | Licensing Information
 • Your authorization code (a 16-character alphanumeric string).
• The machine ID. To get this, start the Micro Focus License Administration tool and select the Get
Machine Id option by entering 6. Make a note of the "Old machine ID".
If you have previously received the licenses and put them in a text file, skip to step 6.
1. Open the Micro Focus license activation web page http://supportline.microfocus.com/activation in a
browser.
2. Enter your authorization code and old machine ID and, optionally, your email address in the Email
Address field.
3. Click Generate.
4. Copy the licenses strings from the web page or the email you receive into a file.
5. Put the license file onto your target machine.
6. Start the Micro Focus License Administration tool and select the Manual License Installation option by
entering 4.
7. Enter the name and location of the license file.

To obtain more licenses

If you are unsure of what your license entitlement is or if you wish to purchase additional licenses for Visual
COBOL, contact your sales representative or Micro Focus Customer Care.

Licensing Information | 57
 Updates and Customer Care
Our Web site provides up-to-date information of contact numbers and addresses.

Further Information and Product Support

Additional technical information or advice is available from several sources.
The product support pages contain a considerable amount of additional information, such as:
• Product Updates on Software Licenses and Downloads, where you can download fixes and
documentation updates.
1. Log into the Software Licenses and Downloads (SLD) site at https://sld.microfocus.com/mysoftware/
download/downloadCenter .
2. Select your account and click Entitlements.
3. Search for the product by using any of the available search parameters.
4. Click Show all entitlements.
5. Click Get Software in the Action column for the product you want to download or update.
In the File Type column, you see entries for "Software" for any GA products, and "Patch" for any
patch updates.
6. Click Download on the relevant row.
• The Examples and Utilities section of the Micro Focus Customer Care Web site, including demos and
additional product documentation. Go to https://supportline.microfocus.com/examplesandutilities/
index.aspx.
• The Support Resources section of the Micro Focus Customer Care Web site, that includes
troubleshooting guides and information about how to raise an incident. Go to https://
supportline.microfocus.com/supportresources.aspx
To connect, enter https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/home/ in your browser to go to the Micro Focus home
page, then click Support & Services > Support. Type or select the product you require from the product
selection dropdown, and then click Support Login.
Note: Some information may be available only to customers who have maintenance agreements.

If you obtained this product directly from Micro Focus, contact us as described on the Micro Focus Web
site, https://www.microfocus.com/support-and-services/contact-support/. If you obtained the product from
another source, such as an authorized distributor, contact them for help first. If they are unable to help,
contact us.
Also, visit:
• The Micro Focus Community Web site, where you can browse the Knowledge Base, read articles and
blogs, find demonstration programs and examples, and discuss this product with other users and Micro
Focus specialists. See https://community.microfocus.com.
• The Micro Focus YouTube channel for videos related to your product. See Micro Focus Channel on
YouTube.
https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/resource-center/webinar

58 | Updates and Customer Care

Information We Need
If your purpose in contacting Micro Focus is to raise a support issue with Customer Care, you should
collect some basic information before you contact us, and be ready to share it when you do.
See the Preparing to Raise a Support Case topic on the Product Documentation pages on Micro Focus
Customer Care, in the product help for Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2017 (click here), or Visual COBOL
for Visual Studio 2019 (click here), or Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2022 (click here).

Creating Debug Files

If you encounter an error when compiling a program that requires you to contact Micro Focus Customer
Care, your support representative might request that you provide additional debug files (as well as source
and data files) to help us determine the cause of the problem. If so, they will advise you how to create
them.

Updates and Customer Care | 59

 Copyright and Disclaimer
© Copyright 2022 Micro Focus or one of its affiliates.
The only warranties for this product and any associated updates or services are those that may be
described in express warranty statements accompanying the product or in an applicable license agreement
you have entered into. Nothing in this document should be construed as creating any warranty for a
product, updates, or services. The information contained in this document is subject to change without
notice and is provided "AS IS" without any express or implied warranties or conditions. Micro Focus shall
not be liable for any technical or other errors or omissions in this document. Please see the product's
applicable end user license agreement for details regarding the license terms and conditions, warranties,
and limitations of liability.
Any links to third-party Web sites take you outside Micro Focus Web sites, and Micro Focus has no control
over and is not responsible for information on third-party sites.

60 | Copyright and Disclaimer