Now Micro Focus, AcuCORP and Fujitsu COBOL users and developers can use Report Writers, Business Intelligence and Web development tools such as Crystal Reports, Microsoft Excel/Access and Macromedia Dream Weaver to access all of their COBOL data in real-time using ODBC, OLE DB and JDBC.

Users no longer need to perform the time consuming and expensive exercise of exporting their data to ASCII files and then loading them into Excel, Microsoft Access or SQL Server.

The seeMoreVirtual Database Server allows existing COBOL applications to run unmodified and access their data stored in either COBOL files (including support for EBCDIC) OR any relational database using standard READ/WRITE and other COBOL verbs avoiding the huge costs and risks involved in manually changing source code.

seeMore provides support for record locking, transactions and replication. Additionally seeMore can also support a multi-company environment that uses multiple COBOL Files.

The seeMore COBOL file handler which is used by the Micro Focus and Fujitsu COBOL run-times allow COBOL applications to seperated from their data by allowing them to run elsewhere on the network to providing a multi-tier environment.

For example, you could leave your data on your Unix/Linux server and run your COBOL applications on Windows workstations. Or you could leave your COBOL applications running on your Unix/Linux server and access your data in SQL Server running on a Windows server. It is your choice.

seeMore does not require any complex time consuming data mapping, it is all automated using either the available Import Wizard or a user based SQL script. Existing customers with an average of 250 COBOL files have completed the setup process in under 10 minutes. If data transformation is requried for data such as dates, simply add a column trigger containing your logic for transformation.

With the high performance seeMore Standard and Virtual Database Servers, COBOL looks and feels just like a standard relational database with features such as synonyms, views and stored procedures.

If you require to-update your COBOL data using your ODBC, JDBC or OLE DB applications then seeMore can be configured to provide this functionality.

Data security is important, seeMore allows security to be setup using Access Lists to prevent unauthorized access to data by users all the way down to column level.

Optionally you can even integrate other data sources into seeMore. So now, not only can you report against your COBOL data, you can report against all of your enterprise data.