COBOL Language Features and Evolution

Understand COBOL language origin and design principles. Discuss COBOL standards and COBOL current usage in IBM platforms. COBOL program structure overview.

• COBOL origins, language design principles, COBOL advantages and disadvantages
• Current language usage
• COBOL standards and their evolution
• Common COBOL development environments
• COBOL on IBM platforms (ILE COBOL, COBOL for AIX, Enterprise COBOL)
• COBOL program structure and coding fundamentals
• Introduction to the program development process

Programming approaches and good coding practices

Know about advantages of structured programming and design. Introduction to object oriented programming and design. Discuss good programming practices.

• Structure programming and design approach and its advantages
• Structured programming theorem and the three valid control structures
• Structured programming and the COBOL language
• Good programming practices: documenting your applications
• Good programming practices: Naming conventions
• Good programming practices: information hiding
• Good programming practices: Error treatment
• Aparecimento da programação estruturada e seu suporte por linguagens de programação
• Brief introduction to Object oriented programming and design

COBOL programs structure – I

Basic COBOL program structure. Explain the purpose of COBOL program divisions and their sections and their structure. Teach basic data definition techniques. Start coding the PROCEDURE DIVISION.

• IDENTIFICATION DIVISION purpose and coding
• ENVIRONMENT DIVISION purpose and coding
• Introduction to DATA DIVISION. Explanation on the purpose of the several sections (FILE SECTION, WORKING-STORAGE and LINKAGE SECTION)
• Data definition primer (Data names and reserved words, Data item hierarchy, basic PICTURE clause, basic data initialization)

PROCEDURE DIVISION coding primer (PROCEDURE DIVISION structure, ACCEPT and DISPLAY and STOP RUN instructions)

COBOL Program structure – II

Discuss more advanced data definition topics. Discuss more advanced PROCEDURE DIVISION coding statements.

Additional data definition topics

• PICTURE clause to edit numeric and alphanumeric data
• Grouping of data
• More about data item hierarchy (special levels, usage considerations)
• FILLER usage
• More about data initialization (VALUE, SET, INITIALIZE, using figurative constants)
• The USAGE clause
• The REDEFINES clause

Additional PROCEDURE DIVISION topics

• Using MOVE to copy or initialize data
• Using arithmetic instructions (ADD, SUBTRACT, MULTIPLY, DIVIDE, COMPUTE)

COBOL Program structure – III

Discuss more advanced PROCEDURE DIVISION coding techniques. Implement conditional logic and loops. Use some common COBOL functions.

• Using conditional logic (introducing the IF instruction)
• Coding loops using PERFORM UNTIL
• Additional topics on conditional logic (class conditions, level 88 usage, nesting)
• More about using PARAGRAPHS
• Using EVALUATE (simple, condition and compound)
• More about PERFORM usage (INLINE, VARYING, TIMES, exiting loops)
• COBOL built-in functions

String and temporal data manipulation

Learn how to manipulate string and temporal data in COBOL.

• The STRING and UNSTRING instructions
• Using INSPECT
• Using reference modification
• String manipulation built-in functions
• Instructions and functions to manipulate temporal data

Using Files

Data storage fundamentals. File types. Coding the FILE SECTION.  How to use sequential files.

Fundamentals on data storage organization

• COBOL Supported file types
• Statements required to deal with files
• ENVIRONMENT DIVISION usage (identifying files)
• Coding the FILE SECTION
• COBOL instructions to process sequential files (OPEN, READ, WRITE, CLOSE)
• Using the AT END and NOT AT END clauses

Table manipulation

Learn how to represent repeating data. Learn to process fixed and variable length repeating data using subscripts and indexes.

• Representing repeating data
• Coding simple lookup tables
• Using subscripts and indexes to access table data
• Table initialization techniques
• Using sequential (SEARCH) and binary (SEARCH ALL) searches
• Multi-dimensional tables
• Variable length tables (OCCURS DEPENDING ON)

Using subprograms and library services

Learn about library services and its advantages. Know how to nest programs and how to communicate between programs.

• Advantages of using library services
• The COPY instruction
• Modular programming advantages
• CALL statement simple usage
• Static and dynamic call
• Cancelling subprograms and program state control
• Nesting programs
• Passing data between programs (PROCEDURE DIVISION and LINKAGE SECTION usage, return code technique)
• Embedding other languages approach (illustrated with embedded SQL)

Formatting reports

Learn how to effectively use COBOL editing techniques to format output data. Approach to design a report writing program. Coding a simple report writing program.

• How to design a report writing program
• COBOL field editing capabilities
• Coding a simple report writing program
• The COBOL Report Writer facility

1. Introduction to relational database query in COBOL

Learn how to use COBOL to retrieve data from a relational database.

• Relational databases primer
• SQL short introduction
• SELECT statement syntaxUsing a cursor to retrieve data from a table
• Communication between the database and your program: Host variables
• Communication between the database and your program: Error checking