I should start by pointing out that I work for Micro Focus and I'm responsible for the COBOL products so you could say I have a vested interest!
Micro Focus has had a COBOL for Visual Studio and supported managed .NET code since VS 2005 and .NET v1. The current product is called "Net Express with .NET" (OK, I know it's not a great name!). We've had a freely downloadable version for personal use but we've had to update it recently and the downloads have been suspended - should be back soon.
We've just announced our new Visual COBOL which is built on Visual Studio 2010. This is a really major update for our technology. Amongst other things, we had a review of the COBOL language to slim it down and make it much easier to use for .NET programming. Talking to some C# programmers recently they quickly understood the COBOL and could start working on the code with very little assistance. I'd better stop the promotion stuff! If you want more information, take a look at http://vs2010.microfocus.com .
A few other really useful sources of information if you're interested in COBOL with VS or .NET:
In either site, just do a search for COBOL.
There doesn't come a COBOL compiler with Visual Studio. It's probably just that it's installed on the lab computers where you found that page. 1 There is COBOL for .NET however and they talk about Visual Studio integration there too. It may be that there are others that integrate into VS too.
1 Similarly I don't assume that Windows comes with an Eiffel IDE, just because it's installed on our university's computers.
COBOL is not part of VS but included through an add-on. The install instructions can be found on the site you referenced at http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/compsci/docs/cobol.html
You need to have Micro Focus Visual COBOL . It adds those project types to the visual studio IDE.
Here is Another link to their products .
The Visual COBOL community is working on a Google 'knol' as a community web site about visual studio cobol. Please let us know if it can be improved, what other information you might want etc: http://knol.google.com/k/alex-turner/visual-studio-cobol/2246polgkyjfl/8#
Thanks - AJ
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