Creating COBOL applications to run standalone or under Visual Basic is a flexible and straightforward process. Developers typically follow the steps below:
Application analysis and design.
For GUI applications, creation and testing of the user interface using Visual Basic’s development environment.
Creation and testing of the COBOL component(s) of the application using the COBOL Project Manager development environment.
Testing and continued development of the overall application that is run under the initial control of Visual Basic when it is a GUI application.
It is worth noting that both Visual Basic and NetCOBOL offer extensive dynamic development environments, making it easy to move between the two when creating and testing applications.
Additionally, both environments provide extensive development support tools to aid the process.
NetCOBOL standalone .EXE files (executables) or .DLL files (dynamic link libraries) do not have to be physically linked into a Visual Basic application and may be called dynamically at run- time by Visual Basic.
Doing away with the requirement to link all of this together allows you to work offline on either end of the application. That is, you may work on and test the user interface under Visual Basic, or work on the COBOL component(s) in the COBOL Project Manager without having first gone through Visual Basic.
Because of the dynamic nature of the two development environments, you do not necessarily have to follow the above steps in order. You could first develop and test the COBOL components and then design the user interface in Visual Basic. The important point is that when it comes time to execute the overall application, you should have the interface and the COBOL components available.
