Summary of Differences

The majority of the applications created with Net Express, Mainframe Express will continue to work in Enterprise Developer without any changes. However, there are some differences between these development systems you should consider when you upgrade to Enterprise Developer.

Compiling and Building Differences

There are several aspects of compiling and building applications that behave differently in Enterprise Developer. You might need to change the project properties and update some of the Compiler directives and settings that you previously used.

Output File Formats
Each project compiles into a single file (.dll, .so or .exe), or to multiple files of the same file type with one output file for each source file (.dll, .so, .exe, .int, or .gnt). As well as an .lbr file, which contains a collection of .int and .gnt files on Windows, you now can use a .dll as the container for application components.
Compiler directives
When you upgrade your source code to Enterprise Developer some Compiler directives that were specifically designed for 16-bit systems now produce an error on compilation because they are no longer relevant. You should remove them from your code and directives files before you compile.
Linking
The static run-time system and the single-threaded run-time system on Windows are no longer required and they are not shipped with Enterprise Developer. Applications built with Enterprise Developer are now linked to the shared or dynamic run-time systems.
Called Programs and Dependencies
At run time, called programs are found in the same way as before. However, there are some new ways to set COBPATH and copy files into a common folder.
File Handler
The File Handler .obj files are not available in Enterprise Developer. Enterprise Developer uses the File handler packaged in the mffh.dll file instead.
OpenESQL Assistant
The OpenESQL Assistant data source names (DSNs) in Enterprise Developer must be configured as ODBC, ADO.NET, or XDB DSNs.
SQL Compiler Directive Options
When you upgrade your to Enterprise Developer, some SQL applications could require additional SQL Compiler directive options to avoid compiler errors.
XML PARSE Statement
In Net Express, the default setting for the XMLPARSE Compiler directive is COMPAT, which causes the XML PARSE statement to return information and events for IBM Enterprise COBOL Version 3. In Enterprise Developer, the default is XMLPARSE(XMLSS), which returns information and events for IBM Enterprise COBOL Version 4.

Run-Time System Differences

There are some differences between the run-time systems supplied with Enterprise Developer and those supplied with Net Express and Mainframe Express. These, however, do not affect your existing applications if you recompile them from the source code in Enterprise Developer.

OpenESQL
Enterprise Developer sets the BEHAVIOR SQL Compiler directive option to MAINFRAME by default to provide optimal performance. To revert to the default behavior exhibited in Net Express, set the BEHAVIOR directive to UNOPTIMIZED.
Single-Threaded Run-Time System
The single-threaded run-time system is not available in Enterprise Developer on Windows. Instead, both single-threaded and multi-threaded applications run using the multi-threaded run-time system. This has no effect on your existing applications.