STEP #1

You can see all that M$ has to offer in the Express area. Or just skip right to the Visual C/C++ Express download

CAUTION! When your get to the download page, Read carefully, the first "Install Now" may not be what you want!
Visual C/C++ Install:

• First install all Microsoft updates for your operating system.
• REBOOT
• After each update, check for more updates, continue until there aren't anymore updates to install.
• REBOOT after each iteration.
• Installing the MS C/C++ can take 10 minutes or up to an hour depending on your environment

OpenCOBOL will use the C compiler to build native executable objects.

STEP #2

Installing OpenCOBOL
To look at the available OpenCOBOL binaries, Go Here: Go Here
Or go Directly to the Windows OpenCOBOL Download, 32bit or 64bit
When the download is complete, Goto your Downloads folder, look for something like "opencobol-1.1-win-vb-(win32/amd64)-bin.zip"

• Unzip the download file. It will create one folder "OpenCobol"
• Copy the "OpenCobol" folder to C:\, so you endup with "C:\OpenCobol"
• Open a Windows Command line window: (Start --> Run --> type cmd), press enter.
• Run (CALL) the Microsoft bat file to tell OC where the C compile is.

Placing the OpenCOBOL files in the C:\OpenCobol folder is taking advantage of the OC defaults.
NOTE on Win7 and Vista do not install any development tools into the program files folder, bad things will happen.
With the exception of tools that specifically developed for Win7 and Vista.

STEP #3

TO TEST ENTER THE FOLLOWING COMMANDS:

cd C:\OpenCobol
call "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio10.0\VC\bin\vcvars32.bat"

The call to the vcvars bat file only needs to be done once per session.
Now you are ready to compile a cobol program. To create a small test source file, enter the following:
Using your editor, create TEST.CBL sourcefile.

IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. TEST.
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
DISPLAY "HELLO WORLD".
STOP RUN.

cobc -x -free TEST.CBL
TEST.exe
HELLO WORLD

Summary

There more config issues, settings and so on, but this a the quick start version. Look at the output from "cobc -h" for information.
AFAIK OpenCOBOL Windows binaries have been pre-built using Visual Studio 2008, and they will work in a VS2010 environment, however I would also recommend looking at the Windows OC source

• Windows OpenCOBOL source
• OpenCOBOL FAQ
• Download the OC Programmer Guide

Read the OpenCOBOL FAQ, it is update regularly, check out the programmers guide. Also, Check back soon I might have a OC_Setup.exe, with everything ready to go for you in one step. Also, instructions to create a distributable application for Windows, Linux, and more.

Free Windows Multi-Language, Multi-Platform editor

Windows, and multi-platform sounds like a contradiction. So, yeah, this software only runs on Windows. However, it makes use of Telnet, ftp, and custom HP3000 protocols to connect to other servers. Using these protocols you can edit, and compile source files remotely, on many different platforms using many different languages. It is and excelent tool for Client-Server projects.

• Standard 3-part application environment reduces the learning curve of new users familiar with existing Windows development products.
• Extensive COBOL support, automatically insert new lines in sequence or renumber a file when saving. Support for COBOL’85 line tags, enable automatic tag update when modifying lines or re-tag a range of lines.
• File ‘tabs’ not only allow you to switch between open files with a single-click but provide an immediate visual representation of those files already open.
• The line on which the cursor is located can be highlighted to ensure the current line is quickly identifiable.
• Color syntax highlighting provides a visual clue to the validity of keywords, comments and quoted strings as you type.
• Quickly switch between languages embedded in the same source file. Color syntax highlighting is used to visually differentiate between each embedded language.
• Split windows, provide for each editor window to be split up to 8 times vertically using the ‘handle’ appearing above the vertical scroll bar.
• Text can be selected in vertical columns or blocks. The selected text can then be indented or, using the mouse, moved to a new position.
• Mark-up languages such as XML and HTML can be configured to enable color syntax highlighting within "<" and ">" tags only.
• Programming language support is easily customizable, create your own languages or modify one or the 30 ready to use definitions.
• CodeAware technology provides a detailed view of the syntax of individual files or entire projects. Navigate the syntax of a file or project as a collapsible tree view, double-clicking to quickly view the actual syntax definition.
• Type info provides detailed definition information by simply placing the mouse pointer above a recognized expression.
• Parameter tips provide argument highlighting when typing functions and procedures.
• Auto complete provides a list of possible recognized expressions to complete a partial string.
• Auto list members provide a list of object/structure members when the recognized delimiter is typed after a known variable.
• Bracket Highlighting provides a visual clue to the scope covered by various bracket/brace combinations. Placing the mouse pointer over a bracket/brace visually identifies the matching pair. This is also available while typing.
• Files containing line numbers are automatically detected, providing support for inserting new lines in sequence or renumbering existing lines.
• Virtually unlimited undo and redo based on available Windows resources.
• Use custom tab positions, ruler and visual guide lines to help format text to fixed character positions. This includes extensive support for interchanging tab and space characters.
• Extensive reformatting options provide sort, change case and simply comment/uncomment a selection with a single click.
• Support for regular expressions in searching, color syntax highlighting and compile error detection.
• Compile source files with just one click. Use predefined compiler configurations to detect each individual error reported. Double-click on an error or step through each error to open and highlight the source file line referenced. Customize error detection to support any compiler/lint tool.
• Create projects to organize your files based on program, language, user – you name it. Assign compilers to each file or groups of files; customize each compile command if necessary. Build commands can be assigned to project folders for large, multi-server, projects. You can even choose to keep your project files on the server*.
• Interactively control remote debuggers using custom interface libraries. Using the code editor and menus you can quickly insert breakpoints, step through code, quick-watch expressions and even display the call stack and locals. Currently supported debuggers include; GDB, WDB, DBX, XDB and PERL.
• Use an unlimited number of bookmarks to identify lines of interest in any number of files. Bookmarks for project files are saved within the project.
• Check the spelling of a selection, a file, or even just the text appearing in quoted strings.
• Use Visual File Compare to analyze the differences between two files. The side-by-side display provides a simple visual representation of any differences allowing either file to be quickly synchronized.
• Support for individual server character sets ensures that files are saved exactly as edited.

NOTE: Programmer Studio is abandon-ware, in other words, the vendor (Whisper Technologies) went out of business and abandoned the software. However, they did a good thing for their remaining customers like me. Before they shutdown ,they made the announcement and posted the following on their Website::
Dear customers,
We regret to inform you that we are going out of business, and shuting our doors.
However we have a final release being made available for free. So download the final version, and use the free lic keys below:

• Contact: free
• Organization: free
• Lic key: 6D90-3AGF7D93GC28D6403FAAG

Download

As a Compliment to Whisper Technology, and the programmers who worked on it for many years.
Thank you guys for such an awesome editor, it is ++ much more than just and editor. I miss the HP3000 and many of the software vendors that surrounded it. I wish the guys at Whisper Technologies would re-open and reintroduce this Product, it is a Enterprise Class development tool. Or, I wish they would donate the source code to an OpenSource Organization, but then, thats an entirely different subject.

Unix Linux, and others

Installing on *nix is the standard *nix method: The “configure” will interogate your system, and build the correct Makefile. Configue will also tell you about any missing required/optional dependencies. If required dependencies are missing then the Makefile will not be created.
Then you can use yum or apt-get, or the standard (configure & make) to install the dependency.

• Download http://www.sim-basis.de/open-cobol-1.1.tar.gz
• tar -xzvf open-cobol-1.1.tar.gz
• cd open-cobol-1.1
• ./configure
• make
• make test
• make install
• Optionally If make fails, you need to do a "make clean" before starting over.

Also on *nix,some package managers will install it for you:
On Ubuntu it was seven clicks, and about 2 minutes!

• apt-get install opencobol
• yum search cobol

A Powerful Programming method

I've found that embedding a script interpreter into Cobol and other languages also, like C/C++, Fortran and Pascal to be a very powerful tool, there are multiple scripting language that lend themselves to being embedded, I use Tcl, it was design to do this. You can get (I don't) a pro/supported version of Tcl from ActiveState, http://www.activestate.com/activetcl or if you're like me, you can find Windows installation at sourceforge, and roll-your-our.
Tcl is Opensource and freely distributable.
Below is a simple GNU-Linux example using COBOL, and embedded Tcl to retrieve an HTML resource from the Web using the Tcl http package. I think retrieving the latest lottery results makes a easily understood example. However I've used this same method get software updates and to automate software registration. I've done similar and more advanced COBOL/Tcl on Windows, and HPUX. With little to no effort I could run this on Windows, or any of the many Platforms where OpenCobol and Tcl/Tk will run.
From COBOL: here is the basic flow.

• Initialize the Tcl interpreter. (This interpreter remains available for the life of the process)
• Execute the Tcl procedure
• In the Tcl script we do two things:
• 1. Retrives a url using http::geturl
  2. Write the url contents into a pre-specified file name
• Back in COBOL, we open the new file.
• We read thru to the end.
• Display the lastest drawing results.

Here is the source code