Net Express provides a complete environment for quickly building COBOL enterprise components and business applications for client/server platforms and the Web.

Micro Focus Net Express� is the market leading COBOL development environment for Windows and UNIX platforms offering the only open scalable alternative to running COBOL systems on the mainframe. It combines a rich Windows development environment with tools for creating and extending enterprise business processes written in COBOL delivering distributed e-business COBOL applications on Windows or UNIX.

Micro Focus Net Express� is a ground-breaking development environment that takes core business processes written in COBOL and extends them to the Web and other distributed platforms. You can quickly construct enterprise components from your existing business logic and use these to develop new Web or client/server applications across your distributed enterprise. Net Express leverages your legacy applications and programming resources, reducing the development cycle and accelerating deployment of new state-of-the-art applications.

SpeechStudio Suite supports SAPI 5 initialization, dynamic grammar creation, recognition parsing, What Can You Say generation, voice recording, and text-to-speech. SpeechStudio Suite includes SpeechRunner, the only solution for testing, analyzing, and debugging voice applications with SAPI 5. SpeechRunner delivers complete testing of voice-enabled applications with interactive test development, stand-aside test execution, and automated results analysis. SpeechRunner supports SAPI 5 compliant voice-recognition engines as well as implementing a simulated voice-recognition engine for highly reliable functional testing.

Application Extension

Net Express lets you extend existing legacy applications to the Web quickly using COBOL code and programming skills you already have. It also allows you to integrate your legacy data and COBOL assets with existing and evolving e-business applications, enabling you to present an integrated e-business to your customer. You can construct distributed applications across a Windows or UNIX environment that can interface with e-business systems written in Java, integrate with IBM WebSphere Enterprise Edition (TXSeries) and access legacy data on the mainframe.

Application Development and Deployment

Net Express allows you to create and maintain Windows or multi-tier distributed applications. Net Express supports the rapid development and extension of Windows GUI applications and client/server applications for deployment, with Micro Focus Application Server, to Windows and UNIX.

Re-hosting

Net Express delivers legacy extension and integration through re-hosting of existing applications, deploying them on Windows and UNIX platforms. Net Express migrates your proven COBOL applications, protecting your investments while reducing risk.

Componentization

Net Express can be combined with application mining technology such as Micro Focus AssetMiner to release invaluable business code locked up in legacy systems. Net Express wizards can then be used to build mined components as Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) or COM objects. The resulting COBOL-based, large-grain objects are language and platform independent. COBOL-wrapped EJBs enable COBOL assets to be accessed from Java-based enterprise applications while COBOL COM objects can inter-operate with Windows applications, including Microsoft .NET languages such as C++ or Visual Basic.

Highlights

Powerful Development Environment

Micro Focus Net Express provides a sophisticated IDE that incorporates a complete suite of application development tools and wizards. Powerful project handling capabilities simplify the edit, compile and debug cycle, and an editor tailored to the needs of COBOL programmers makes it easy to modify code.

State-of-the-art COBOL Compiler

The compiler in Net Express provides:

• High-performance native code that can be optimized for peak performance on specific hardware platforms
• Extensive COBOL dialect support that makes it easy for you to re-host existing applications
• Scalability, ranging from standalone PCs to multi-processor UNIX systems
• Full support for Object COBOL and COBOL development and debugging
• Base class library support with comprehensive collection classes, including a full Win32 GUI class library

Advanced Debugging Support Using Animator�

• Full control over the debugging process. You can single step, run to a particular location and reset the execution point to any statement in your code
• The ability to examine and change any data item in the program during execution
• Just-In-Time (JIT) animation -- if your application fails while it is running, Net Express can be automatically started at the point in the source code where the error occurred
• Multi-threaded application debugging -- freeze, thaw, or activate specific threads. Set breakpoints within threads.

Production Debugging and Diagnostics Enhancements

• FaultFinder Utility -- designed to diagnose the problem if applications fail in production by providing a snapshot at the time of the abnormal termination
• Profiler Utility -- creates a report analyzing the performance of a COBOL application