Interactive COBOL 3 History

This page gives a brief history of the ICOBOL 3 product.

3.0x (August, 2000 - December, 2000)

• Source code is compatible with ICOBOL 2
• Data files are compatible with ICOBOL 2
• Program code and data size limitations are virtually gone
• COPY REPLACING
• EXTERNAL files and data items
• OCCURS DEPENDING ON
• LINAGE support on printer files
• START on sequential files
• multi-character program switches
• expressions in subscripts
• varying length records
• intrinsic functions
• reference modification
• EVALUATE and INITIALIZE

3.1x (April, 2001 - January, 2002)

• Integrated Development Environment (Windows)
• Thin Client support for sp2-enabled programs
• Runtime system that runs as a Windows application instead of a console application.
• ShellExecute support
• Windows - Change Font and size support
• Flexus GUI support upgraded to 4.0.65
• ICIDE enhancements
• Watch support added for Windows NT/2000
• Audit logging
• ThinClient with UNIX

3.2x (April, 2002 - November, 2002)

• Enhanced SCREEN Section
• Enhanced ACCEPT and DISPLAY statements
• Flexus GUI support upgraded to 4.0.75
• Flexus GUI support upgraded to 4.0.80
• Enhanced ICCHECK, ICFIXUP, ICREORG, and ICSTAT reporting
• Enhanced builtin calls for the runtime system.
• Support for MAC address licensing under Linux.
• Flexus GUI support upgraded to 4.0.88
• SP2 ThinClient code upgraded to 4.0.38
• Improvements in SP2 end-session handling
• Performance improvements to ICEXEC handling of printer queues

3.3x (February, 2003 - March, 2004)

• A character mode thin-client for the runtime system (may eliminate the need for a telnet client or client terminal emulator)
• Support for up to 2048 consoles, printer queues, printer devices, and serial devices.
• Support for a buffer pool of up to 1024 MB
• Support for compressed mode in Windows and with appropriate terminals
• Ability to save the client-server login profile  in UNIX clients
• Ability to set  environment variables from the runtime system command line
• New file format for the configuration files
• The performance of  ISAM keyed access has been improved.
• ISAM sequential access has been improved in the case where other users are adding and deleting records in the same file at the same time.
• The performance of the character mode thin-client has been improved.
• The runtime system will  now map @LPTn to the corresponding @PCQn, eliminating the need to use the link file for this mapping.
• Watch can now be used to watch a terminal with more lines and columns than the watcher's  terminal.
• A number of new capabilities were added to the ICSMVIEW utility.

3.4x (March, 2004 - January, 2005)

• Integrated SQL (ISQL) support was added to the runtime and compiler.  ISQL provides a simple way of using popular relational databases directly from within COBOL programs in a nearly seamless fashion. 
• New literal types include: DATE, TIME, TIMESTAMP, and INTERVAL.
• New data types include: CHARACTER, CHARACTER VARYING, DATE,  INDICATOR, INTEGER, INTERVAL, NUMERIC, SMALLINT, TIME, and TIMESTAMP.
• New statements include: COMMIT, CONNECT, DEALLOCATE, DISCONNECT, EXECUTE, EXECUTE IMMEDIATE, FETCH, GET DIAGNOSTICS, PREPARE, ROLLBACK, and SET CONNECTION. At runtime, ISQL makes use of standard ODBC calls to access any data manager available to ODBC.
  NOTE: Use of these new statements requires an additional runtime license called an ICSQL Runtime License.
• The ICSORT utility now has a scripting capability. This feature provides logic statements to control record selection, formatting statements to select fields and compose output records, and conversion statements to convert data and perform character set and string translations.
• More of the system's code has been placed in .DLLs on Windows and Shared Objects on the various UNIX platforms. This reduces the size of the releases and improves memory sharing among multiple components.
• The Flexus qpr and sp2 components and documentation have been updated.
• Enhancements to the icinfo and icwhohas utilities
• Enhanced telnet server detection.
• The font selection capabilities of the GUI runtimes was enhanced to provide Bold versions of fonts. This can result in an easier-to-read font for some applications.
• Enhancements to the iccheck and icstat utilities.
• The Flexus components (icqpr and icsp2) were updated.
• The Unix server-side networking daemon (icnetd) now sets additional environment-variables to more closely mimic a Unix login.
• The various runtime systems were enhanced to allow setting the current directory from the environment at startup. This is especially useful for certain client-server scenarios.
• Support for additional function keys was added within the ANSI terminal definition. This provides added capability that is compatible with several popular telnet servers for Windows.
• The Flexus Sp2 component was updated
• The thin-client runtimes (icthinc and icrunrc) can now be installed using a streamlined client install.
• The printer-pass-thru capabilities of the Windows GUI runtime (icrunw) and thin-client (icrunrc) have been enhanced significantly.
• Two new Windows installers were added to streamline client installation. The first is for the GUI thin client (icthinc) and the second is for the character thin client (icrunrc).
• The "blink" display attribute is now supported in icrunw and icrunrc.  It is no longer necessary to use the terminal definition file to map this attribute to a special color combination.
• Several enhancements were added to the icsvcmgr control panel applet and its help was updated.

3.5x (April, 2005 - March, 2007)

• A new build for Intel-based systems using the Linux 2.6 kernel.
• A new builtin called IC_SEND_MAIL that allows you to send an e-mail message directly from your program.
• A new command-line utility called icwebmsg that allows you to send a URL request to a server and get the response back. It can be used for something as simple as downloading a web page to something as complex as performing an XML-based transaction.
• The number of arguments that can be handled by various ISQL statements was increased.
• Bug fixes
• Updated sp2 components
• Updated Sentinel device driver
• Enhancements to several terminal definition files
• Final releases for diminishing UNIX platforms: Sun, DG/UX, SCO, UNIXWare
• Final releases for diminishing Windows versions: Windows 9x, ME, NT

3.6x (July, 2007 - August, 2008)

• Enhanced thin-client capabilities
• Updated SP2 and QPR components
• Updated Sentinel driver
• Improved support for Windows Vista
• Bug fixes