Acucorp Announces the Upcoming Release of Its extend6 Interoperability Series
Latest technology solutions to provide COBOL interoperability with .NET, Java and XMLSan Diego, CA – May 1, 2003 – Acucorp, Inc., an international developer of legacy application extension solutions, is pleased to announce the upcoming launch of its extend™6 Interoperability Series. The Series, which begins with today’s release of Version 6.0, will soon allow software developers to connect their mission-critical business systems to a variety of technologies that do not traditionally interoperate with COBOL—including the .NET, Java and XML computing languages as well as the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and mobile phone wireless platforms.
Acucorp’s current solutions support .NET, Java and XML interoperability using a component adapter technology from Transoft, Inc. However, in upcoming product releases, this technology will be more closely integrated with extend—providing optional functionality that will allow Acucorp’s ACUCOBOL-GT™ development system to deploy programs as Web services. By creating a Web service architecture, the extend6 Interoperability Series makes it possible to take relevant COBOL code from an existing, or new, application and transform that code into a discrete component with an interface that can be used by other programs—even those written in another source language. The COBOL code then exposes its methods, parameters and results, appearing to the outside world as a COM object or Java Bean.
“The enhanced interoperability provided by our Web services model means that ISVs and Fortune-class corporations can integrate their vital business systems with other applications, languages and platforms,” explains Drake Coker, Acucorp’s Co-founder and Chief Scientist. “Not only does this provide universal connectivity and improved data access, but it also increases market responsiveness and ROI while dramatically lowering an organization’s total cost of ownership.”
New with Version 6.0
Version 6.0, the first release in the extend6 Interoperability Series, will lay the foundation for a true, integrated Web services architecture as well as provide a number of other new application development enhancements including:
- Support for XML
Applications written and compiled in ACUCOBOL-GT can soon read, process and output data in XML format—enabling the data to be transported and shared over LANs, WANs and the Internet, even with partners and customers who do not have business systems written in COBOL. To provide this bi-directional support, ACUCOBOL-GT Version 6.0 features a developer utility that may be used to create File Descriptors and SELECT statements from existing XML files. It also provides a runtime-resident file system interface that reads XML data and transparently converts it to sequential files for COBOL processing. The interface, AcuXML, also converts COBOL output data into XML format as required.
“By providing COBOL support for XML, we’ve given businesses a more cost effective and efficient way to standardize and exchange data from organization to organization, department to department, or even application to application,” says Coker.
- New AcuBench™ Report Composer Facility
Acucorp’s integrated development environment, AcuBench, now includes improved report generation capabilities. Using a new interface that resembles a screen painter, developers can lay out reports and then automatically generate the COBOL code that positions the report elements. In addition, they can produce the required code to present their reports as HTML documents, enabling users to view these reports from a Web browser.
- AcuBench Drag and Drop Capabilities
Version 6.0 allows developers to drag-and-drop data items from graphical file and data designers to the Screen Designer or Report Composer window for prototyping screens and reports.
- Version 5 of the Vision File System
Version 5 of Vision, extend’s native indexed sequential file system, will enhance programmer flexibility by expanding a variety of limits, including record and file sizes, table limits and block sizes. COBOL developers who need to store large objects, like JPEG and WAV files, in their COBOL data will soon be able to do so with an increase in the record size capacity—up to 64 megabytes. In addition, Vision Version 5 provides support for larger pre-allocate and extension factors.
About Acucorp
Founded in 1988, Acucorp, Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in San Diego, California, with additional offices in Great Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Acucorp's products are distributed in more than 75 countries throughout the world, and its technology users include Ford Argentina, Red Cross Belgium, Sanyo Extended Data Systems, Seagram Americas, Siemens, The Travelex Group (formerly Thomas Cook), Tower Records and Warner Music Group. The company continues to design, develop, and market robust solutions for extending the life of inherited COBOL applications.
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Acucorp, extend, ACUCOBOL, and AcuBench are trademarks or registered trademarks of Acucorp, Inc. All other trademarks used are the property of their respective owners.
