Introduction to COBOL Programming

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Duration: 5.0 days

Method: Instructor led, Hands-on workshops

Price: $2800.00

Course Code: CO1010

Audience

Application programmers who want to learn COBOL.

Description

This course provides application developers with basic knowledge in developing COBOL programs in a mainframe environment. It is designed for both new and experienced programmers. They will learn as much COBOL in 1 week to make them instantly productive in maintaining changes or writing new programs. Students will have hands on workshops of programs to code, test, and compile for report writing and file processing.

Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:

Code and test COBOL batch programs
Understand the principles and practices of “Structured Coding”
Be able to create reports and process input and output files
Code table array handling. Search table arrays.
Understand keyed and non-keyed (sequential) files
Understand the more common ABENDS that may occur and how to handle them
Review file status codes. Review COBOL standards and guidelines (Best Practices)

Prerequisites

Familiarity with z/OS JCL, TSO/ISPF and z/OS Utilities and a programming background is preferred.

Topics

I. COBOL Essentials
- What is COBOL
- COBOL history
- ‘Hello World’ program
- Operating systems for IBM mainframes
II. COBOL Overview
- COBOL preparation steps. Compile and Link
- COBOL advantages/limitations
- COBOL program divisions
- COBOL columns and margins
- COBOL Syntax
III. COBOL Definitions
- Divisions in detail
- Describing file definitions (FD)
- Describing fields
- Level numbers
- Picture clauses
- USAGE numeric clause
- Value clause
- Group and elementary items
- Copy statement
- Compile Process
IV. Procedure Division
- Open / Close files
- COBOL Accept statement
- Current date
- COBOL display
- Move statement
- Goback / Stop Run
V. Editing and Branching
- Structured vs non structures coding
- Perform statement
- If-Then-Else logic
- Evaluate statement
VI. Testing and Debugging
- Testing strategies
- Compiler listings
- ABENDS
- Display statement
VII. Structured COBOL
- Sequence, selection, iteration
- Sub programs
- Readability
- COBOL programming standards and guidelines
VIII. COBOL Reports
- Report
- Break Logic
- Report output lines
- Redefines, Inspect, String commands
- Line counters
- Page counters
- Switch logic
- Report line carriage control
IX. Arithmetic Statements and Intrinsic Functions
- Coding arithmetic statements
  - Compute statements
  - Arithmetic expressions
  - Add and Subtract statements
  - Multiply and Divide statements
- On size Error handling
X. Working with Characters
- Reference modification
- Functions for working with characters
- String statements
- Unstring statement
- Inspect statement
  - With the Tallying clause
  - With the Replacing clause
  - With the Tallying and Replacing clauses
  - With the Converting clause
- Two illustrative routines
  - An editing routine
  - A conversion routine
XI. Table Handling
- What is a table
- What is the OCCURS clause
- Tables and Redefines
- Initializing a table
- Loading a table
- Searching a table
- Using subscripts
- One dimensional tables
XII. Testing and Debugging
- Testing Strategies
- Compiler Listings
- Usefulness of listings with abends
- System Abends (SOC1, SOC4, SOC7)
- User Abends
XIII. Structured Program Development
- Program specifications
- Pseudo code
- Analyze
- Design
- Code
- Compile
- Test
- Document
- Test plan