COBOL for Experienced Programmers

This five-day course has been specifically designed for programmers with experience in other languages (PL/I, Assembler, Java etc.). It is taught using a combination of classroom tuition and practical exercises, and includes realistic case studies that can be based on the client's particular environment and workload.

This course is available as an open-enrolment course on demand (minimum 2 students), and also for one-company presentations, live over the Internet..

What you will learn

On successful completion of this course you 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

Prerequisite for attendance is experience in programming skills in other languages. Attendees should also have a conceptual level understanding of the z/OS mainframe environment and the ability to use TSO/ISPF and JCL.

Duration

5 days

Fee (per attendee)

£2415 (ex VAT)

This includes free online 24/7 access to course notes.

Hard copy course notes are available on request from rsmshop@rsm.co.uk

at £50.00 plus carriage per set.

Course Code

CBCO

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.