New Features in COBOL Server 10.0

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The Micro Focus COBOL and Enterprise extensions for Visual Studio Code have been repackaged by Rocket Software on the Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace.

• The Rocket^® COBOL Extension for Visual Studio Code (formerly Micro Focus COBOL Extension for Visual Studio Code) provides COBOL edit, compile and debug support for Visual COBOL and Enterprise Developer users in Visual Studio Code.
• The Rocket^® Enterprise Extension for Visual Studio Code (formerly Micro Focus Enterprise Extension for Visual Studio Code) provides PL/I edit, compile and debug support for Enterprise Developer users in Visual Studio Code. This extension installs the Rocket COBOL extension.
• The Rocket^® JVM COBOL Extension for Visual Studio Code (formerly Micro Focus JVM COBOL Extension for Visual Studio Code) provides support for debugging JVM COBOL code in Visual Studio Code.
• The Learn COBOL extension for Visual Studio Code provides all training materials for the Micro Focus COBOL Fundamentals Training course.

New enhancements in this release are:

• Support for accepting command-line arguments in COBOL notebooks.
• New debug launch options - console and integrated Terminal support for platform specific values in the launch.json file.

• Support is available for fine-tuning the colors of different parts of the code in the editor via Visual Studio Code's settings.json file. This requires a minimum release 10.0 of Visual COBOL.

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This release provides the following enhancements:

• Remote File Access - it is now possible to remotely access files using a configured Remote File Access (RFA) MFCS Connector. You can access ordinary files, cataloged datasets, and spool output. This also enables remote editing of COBOL data files using the new Data Tools utility. This enables you to download and upload files, datasets, and spool output locally or remotely using the existing Enterprise Server Security configuration. Various security features make this solution a more secure alternative to more generic solutions such as FTP and SSH.

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This release includes the following enhancements:

• Catalog view has improved filtering options and now includes paging. A new Load on navigation check box enables you to filter based on the previously selected conditions.
• A new Configuration Report page enables you to visualize potential security vulnerabilities in the ESCWA and MFDS configurations. Each domain and configuration attribute combination has its own help dialog.
• Role-based security configuration. You can now configure a users view of ESCWA. If a user does not require specific roles then you can hide corresponding pages and API. You can configure the role-based access from the Role Options page. Click Security , expand ESCWA Configuration followed by the ESM, and then click Roles.
  Note: Role-based security is an ESCWA only feature that works on top of existing product security.
• It is now possible to remove Locks, if necessary, to fix applications that are broken due to a lock that has not been removed. You can enable this feature from the Locks page. Click Native > Monitor > Locks, and then click Remove Locks. This functionality is controlled by the casstop resource entity in the OPERCMDS resource class.
  CAUTION:
  Incorrectly removing locks can result in system instability and corruption or loss of data.
• Region verification - ESCWA can now verify the configuration of selected components for an enterprise server region. You can use this feature to identify potential start up or configuration issues for the selected region. The verification process uses the casverify utility to perform the verification action.
• The API return codes have been improved. Previously, when the region monitor and control APIs were called, they would return a HTTP 200 code, with the error specified in the JSON output. The return codes have been improved to give more information. You can configure the API to use the new or old behavior.
• The ESCWA user interface is now more responsive and can be used with a greater variety of smaller Web browsers.

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This release includes the following enhancements:

• Enterprise Server security features provided by the VSAM External Security Manager (ESM) module are enabled by default. You will need to supply valid credentials when you interact with ESCWA, the Micro Focus Directory Server and regions in the browser based UI or in the IDE, use certain utilities from the command line, use TN3270 emulator to access regions, log into or with FileShare. See After Installing > Enterprise Server Security Features for details on how to configure this product.
• TLS Certificate Checking Utility - a new executable in the product that can be used to help diagnose problems with TLS certificates. It can check the validity of certificates, verify certificate chains, check that certificates and private keys match and check that a certificate contains a SAN that matches a provided hostname/address. Improves TLS usability by diagnosing TLS certificate problems. See CertChecker Utility for more information.
• The VSAM ESM Module, which provides file-based security for Enterprise Server is now a GA quality.
  • User authentication and resource authorization control can be enabled through a simple file-based security mechanism.
  • Security data can be imported from YAML or LDIF and exported to YAML for portability and ease of editing / scripting.
• Additional optional security features are available for HTTP and MFBINP conversations, for the Web Services and J2EE, Web, and Remote File Access conversation types. Listeners can be configured to require user authentication and/or to restrict access to specific types of requests. See Enhanced Security for HTTP and MFBINP for more information.

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• The SafeNet Sentinel licensing system that was available with previous releases of this product has been deprecated and is no longer available in release 10.0. This product also uses the Micro Focus AutoPass licensing technology which was introduced in release 8.0. Starting with release 10.0, AutoPass is the only licensing technology available in this product.

• The SafeNet Sentinel licenses are no longer supported, and you need to use AutoPass licenses starting with release 10.0. Contact your account manager to replace your existing SafeNet Sentinel with AutoPass licenses.