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How do I set up isCOBOL to access Vision files?

Estimated Reading Time: 2 Minutes

Question:
What do I need to do to access Vision files from isCOBOL?

Answer:

isCOBOL 2023R1 and later
isCOBOL 2023R1 added an interface to the Vision file system called VisionJ. You can create, write, read, and lock Vision files using this interface by setting file index:

   iscobol.file.index=VisionJ
Compression is supported with this file handler, but encrypted files and transaction logging are not.
If you need to access Vision files with encryption or use transaction logging, you should use the vfc (Vision File Connector) described below.

isCOBOL 2022R2 and earlier
In order to access Vision you can build a Vision File Connector (vfc) and set iscobol.file.index to "vfc".

  1. Building the vfc
    This vfc, runcbl.dll (or libruncbl.so on Unix/Linux), is a specially relinked version of Acucorp's wrun32.dll (or libruncbl.a on Unix/Linux). You will need Microsoft Visual Studio standard edition in Windows or a C compiler and linker in Unix/Linux to build your vfc yourself.
    If you want Veryant to create this file for you, you can send us all of the files in your Acucorp lib directory and tell us exactly which version of ACUCOBOL you have installed and the name and version of the operating system.
  2. Setting up your environment
    The vfc depends on other DLLs that are in the AcuGT/bin directory. So make sure that AcuGT/bin is in PATH or that those DLLs are in a directory which is in PATH.
    You need a valid Acucorp runtime license in the PATH as well.
  3. Assigning the vfc to your files
    Once you have the vfc built and your environment set up, add the following line to your isCOBOL properties file to set all file access to the vfc:
       iscobol.file.index=vfc
    
    or this line to set up a single file if only one or some of your files are in the Vision format:
    iscobol.file.index.FileName=vfc
    
    FileName is the physical name of your file, but it must be written in lowercase in the properties file.
    For example, if you have:
       select mylogicalfile assign to "MyPhysicalFile"
    
    then you would set: iscobol.file.index.myphysicalfile=vision Note that: if you have iscobol.file_suffix=DAT you must specify the file extension in all lowercase in the iscobol.file.index.FileName variable. For example:
       iscobol.file_suffix=DAT iscobol.file.index.myphysicalfile.dat=vision
    
How do I set up isCOBOL to access Vision files?
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