COBOL for Experienced Programmers

Objectives
On successful completion of this course, attendees will be able to:

• code the four divisions of a COBOL program
• write, compile and test COBOL batch programs in an IBM environment
• access files from COBOL programs
• perform arithmetic operations in COBOL programs
• use conditional expressions
• call COBOL subroutines
• define and access tables using both subscripts and indexes.

Who Should Attend
Experienced applications programmers.
Prerequisites
Programming skills in other languages (Assembler, PL/I, Java, etc). Some familiarity with TSO/ISPF and the mainframe environment would be an advantage.
Duration
5 days
Course Code
CBCO
Contents
Structure & coding conventions
PC Metalanguage; the COBOL character set ; coding conventions; divisions, sections, paragraphs, sentences and statements


IDENTIFICATION DIVISION



ENVIRONMENT DIVISION



DATA DIVISION
FILE SECTION and WORKING - STORAGE SECTION; FDs; hierarchy and level numbers; elementary and group data items; PICTUREs; the VALUE clause; editing characters; literals, figurative constants.


PROCEDURE DIVISION
MOVE, ADD, SUBTRACT, MULTIPLY, DIVIDE and COMPUTE; PERFORM; ACCEPT and DISPLAY; OPEN and CLOSE; READ and WRITE; file access modes; indexed and relative files.


Conditional statements and branching
IF and ELSE; comparisons and tests; Level 88; negated conditions; nested IFs; GO TO; PERFORM UNTIL; EVALUATE.


Table handling and data representation
Tables; PERFORM...VARYING; implicit and explicit redefinition; DISPLAY, COMP, COMP-3, SYNC and JUSTIFY; data representation; INITIALIZE.


Additional statements and alternative constructs
DECLARATIVES; the CORRESPONDING clause.


Other features
COPY; LINKAGE SECTION; CALL; SORT and MERGE.