Getting Started with Mainframe COBOL
This course serves as an introduction to programming in COBOL, especially on the Mainframe, through use of a real-world example program.
What you'll learn
COBOL seems to have more lives than a herd of cats. The death of COBOL has been touted for years - nay, decades. Yet, according to some estimates, there are well over 200 BILLION lines of COBOL code out there - and more code is being generated every day. In this course, Getting Started with Mainframe COBOL, you will learn many of the basics of the oft underestimated language that is COBOL by using it to solve a real-world business request. First, you'll learn all about the history of COBOL. Next, you'll explore the COBOL program structure. Finally, you'll wrap up this course by learning about data types and then trying your hand at writing a real-world COBOL program. By the end of this course, you'll understand the basics of COBOL, including being able to successfully write your own programs.
Table of contents
- Procedure Division 1m
- Sections, Paragraphs, and the PERFORM Statement 7m
- STOP RUN, GOBACK, and CONTINUE Statements 4m
- OPEN Statement 3m
- IF Statement 7m
- DISPLAY Statement 4m
- MOVE Statement and RETURN-CODE Special Register 5m
- ACCEPT Statement 3m
- COMPUTE Statement and Intrinsic Functions 3m
- INITIALIZE Statement 2m
- PERFORM UNTIL Statement 3m
- READ Statement - Sequential 2m
- READ Statement - Random 2m
- EVALUATE Statement 2m
- ADD Statement 2m
- WRITE Statement 2m
- CLOSE Statement 6m
About the author
Tim Slate has been programming professionally for over 20 years, beginning not-professionally in the 1980s when he was 10. He’s written in BASIC (VB and “1980s” BASIC), Assembly for various CPUs, C/C++, Ada, Java, COBOL, Ideal, Perl, RPGII, and other languages, on platforms from PCs to Mainframes. He’s created his own languages, but for the good of society, they have been lost to the annals of time. Tim taught night classes three semesters at Keene State College, owned a small retail store, ac... more