Veryant has introduced the latest release of its isCOBOL Application Platform Suite (APS) software. With isCOBOL APS 2008 Service Pack 1 (SP1), organizations with COBOL assets can enhance their core applications and reduce development time by taking advantage of an Eclipse-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE), UniKix mainframe rehosting technology from Clerity Solutions, and advanced diagnostic capabilities.

"COBOL continues to be the language of business around the world," said Alfredo Iglesias, vice president of business development for Veryant. "By including an Eclipse-based IDE and other advances in our latest release, it is now even easier to maintain and modernize COBOL application code."

isCOBOL software protects and extends valuable application assets by blending the optimized, business-oriented nature of COBOL with the openness, portability, and power of the Java platform, without retraining staff or rewriting code. By leveraging Eclipse, developers can finally use the same IDE to code and debug COBOL, Java, and other languages.

Since the isCOBOL Runtime Environment is written 100% in Java, COBOL application developers can develop and deploy across many platforms, including AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Linux, Windows, Mac OS, and mainframe systems, using a single code base. Enhancements to the isCOBOL Development System now make data access 100% portable as well. As new RDBMS releases are issued, or as market demand dictates, organizations using isCOBOL APS can easily transition between relational database platforms without requiring any source code changes.

isCOBOL APS 2008 SP1 is also the first Veryant release to be officially integrated with UniKix mainframe rehosting technology from Clerity, offering a choice of COBOL compilers to enterprise-class customers with rehosted CICS, IMS, and related legacy assets.

Additional enhancements in isCOBOL APS 2008 SP1 include:

• Up to 5x performance improvement when utilizing isCOBOL ISAM Server
• Up to 4x faster compile times, shortening iterative development and debugging cycles
• Bidirectional EXTFH interface support for indexed, relative, or sequential files
• Abend Diagnostic Snapshot (ADS), a detailed report provided by the isCOBOL Runtime Environment, for troubleshooting and root cause analysis
• isCOBOL APS 2008 SP1 is available now. The Eclipse-based isCOBOL IDE is included at no extra charge with the isCOBOL Development System. Veryant continues to simplify deployments and lower total cost of ownership for organizations by bundling the isCOBOL Debugger, isCOBOL Server (thin client and distributed processing), as well as isCOBOL ISAM Server with the isCOBOL Runtime Environment at no extra fee.