Microsoft COBOL

Description

A COBOL-85 compiler for 16 bit OS/2 and DOS introduced in september 1988 as version 3.0 and with some limited Windows 3 support in version 4.5 introduced in 1990. In addition to adhering to the COBOL-85 standard the compiler comes with some support for IBM's DB/2 in version 4 and ANSI 85 definition, X/Open XPG3 COBOL definition, COMP-1 32 and 64 bit floating point extensions as in IBM OSVS COBOL and IBM VS COBOL II in version 4.5.

The actual compiler for versions 3.0 and higher was licensed from Microfocus, the rest of the tools like the debugger and editor were in-house developments from Microsoft, and earlier versions were ports of the old Microsoft Cobol-80 compiler for CP/M. The v1 and v2 versions of the DOS compiler have peculiarities of their own so code had to be ported from those versions to later versions, Microfocus still supports some of those non-standard behaviours in their compilers to aid in porting.

Versions

DOS Compiler by Microsoft

• 1982: Microsoft COBOL 1.0

ANSI x3.23 1974 standard

• 1984: Microsoft COBOL 1.1
• 1985: Microsoft COBOL 2.0
• 1986: Microsoft COBOL 2.1 / Microsoft COBOL Tools
• 1987: Microsoft COBOL 2.2

Last release of the in house developed Cobol compiler

DOS & OS/2 Compiler by MicroFocus

• 1988: Microsoft COBOL 3.0

First release of the MicroFocus developed compiler for OS/2 1.0 / DOS 3.0.

First Cobol development kit from Microsoft that uses the same tools as the other Microsoft "Professional" development toolkits use (C, Pascal, Pro Basic Dev kit etc.), including "Animator" source level debugger, Microsoft Editor and incremental linker

First version with OS/2 support, has full library compatibility, i.e. same code will compile on both DOS and OS/2.

ANSI 85 COBOL support. According to MS, up to 10 times faster code and 30% faster I/O than with MS-COBOL v.2.2.

• 1989: Microsoft COBOL 4.0

for OS/2 1.1 or higher, DOS 3.0 or higher

Greatly enhanced OS/2 support

Limited support for IBM's DB/2

• 1990: Microsoft COBOL 4.5

Conforms to the ANSI 85 and the X/Open XPG3 COBOL specifications

Supports COMP-1 32 and 64 bit floating point extensions as in IBM OSVS COBOL and IBM VS COBOL II.

Adds limited Windows 3 support

Table Sort added.

Enhanced IBM DB/2 support.

• 1991: Microsoft COBOL 4.51

Last known version with OS/2 support.

Bugfix release

DOS/Windows Compiler by MicroFocus

• 1992: Microsoft COBOL 5.0

OS/2 Support dropped - Greatly enhanced Windows 3.x support

Last release of the toolkit.

License

• Discontinued Software

Author

• Microsoft

Links

• Microsoft Cobol V5 Showcase