Microsoft COBOL
Description
A COBOL-85 compiler for 16 bit OS/2 and DOS introduced in 1988 as version 4 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 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. 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
- Microsoft COBOL v5 1992
- OS/2 Support dropped - Greatly enhanced Windows 3.x support
- Last release of the toolkit.
- Microsoft COBOL v4.51 1991
- Last known version with OS/2 support.
- Bugfix release
- Microsoft COBOL v4.5 1990
- 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.
- Microsoft COBOL v4 1989
- First version with OS/2 support
- Limited support for IBM's DB/2
- 1988: COBOL 3.0
- 1987: COBOL 2.2
- Last release of the in house developed Cobol compiler
- 1985: COBOL 2.0
- 1984: COBOL 1.1
Prerequisites for versions 4.x
- OS/2 1.1 or higher
- DOS 3.0 or higher
License
- Discontinued Software
Author
- Microsoft