Web-Server, Hosts, and Requirement

This article is aimed at choosing a web host or setting up a web server for use with OpenCOBOL.  The goal is to get you ready to start writing your own OpenCOBOL web applications.  COBOL on the web? Why of course.

Local or Hosted

First you need to decided which you want to do.  Local or hosted.  I would recommend doing local first for development or if you are really anxious and want hosted skip ahead.  Local has the advantage that you will not need to use an ftp software to upload/download source files, nor are you dependent on your hosting service (assuming you pay for hosting) having the right support software or access permissions needed.

Windows

Windows is probably the easiest to setup for COBOL cgi.  The recommended Web Server and easiest to setup is XAMPP. It is completely open source and virtually brainless to install.

Just download and following instructions. Got it?  Good.

After you have installed XAMPP you will need to download and install OpenCOBOL.  Please refer to the OpenCOBOL forum or Add 1 to COBOL instructions for installing on windows.

<please be patient while we gather the instructions for walking you through your first COBOL CGI under xampp>

MAC

With MAC OS X you have two options.  First is the built in Apache server.   This will require the OCKit4WebMACOSX version OR you may download and install the XAMPP for MAC.

Ubuntu

<Comming Soon>

Hosted

DreamHost.com

Currently the recommended host provider is DreamHost.  This is due to the fact that two users of OpenCOBOL have already been able to get OpenCOBOL working on DreamHost and there is a kit OCKit3Web available for download.  The kit will install all required files for OpenCOBOL and setup the environment variables as needed.

Requirements for using OpenCOBOL cgi

Taken from the OpenCOBOL.org site:

OpenCOBOL requires the following external libraries to be installed:

GNU MP (libgmp) 4.1.2 or later libgmp is used to implement decimal arithmetic.

GNU MP is licensed under GNU Lesser General Public License.

GNU Libtool (libltdl) libltdl is used to implement dynamic CALL statements.

GNU Libtool is licensed under GNU Lesser General Public License.

NOTE – Libtool is not required for Linux and Windows (including MinGW and Cygwin)

The following libraries are optional:

Berkeley DB (libdb) 1.85 or later libdb can be used to implement indexed file I/O and SORT/MERGE.

Berkeley DB is licensed under the original BSD License (1.85) or their own open-source license (2.x or later). Note that, as of 2.x, if you linked your software with Berkeley DB, you must distribute the source code of your software along with your software, or you have to pay royalty to Oracle Corporation. For more information about Oracle Berkeley DB dual licensing go to : Oracle / Embedded / Oracle Berkeley DB

Ncurses (libncurses) 5.2 or later libncurses can be used to implement SCREEN SECTION. Ncurses is licensed under a BSD-style license.

In order to install OpenCOBOL on a hosted site either the required packages are already installed or you have enough permissions/access to install them youself.   If you can find another provider other than DreamHost, please update this Wiki accordingly.

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