Structured COBOL Workshop for Enterprise COBOL

Course Number:  644-TF
Recommended Duration:  5 days

Intended Audience
Experienced programmers needing to learn COBOL as a second language.  Entry level programmers learning COBOL as their first programming language.

Course Overview
Although the course is designed with the IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS and OS/390 compiler in mind, the content applies to IBM COBOL for OS/390 & VM with the exception of Unicode support.  There are 17 hands-on exercises.

Objectives
Students who complete this course will be able to write or maintain COBOL programs that do not require advanced capabilities of the language.  The emphasis here is learning the basics of the language, along with developing program design skills using pseudocode.

Prerequisites
At the very least, the student entering this course should have background in using a text editor for keying in programs, and know how to run jobs and examine the output.  Some introduction to data processing concepts is also recommended.

Topics

• The COBOL language

• ANSI standards

• EBCDIC / ASCII / Unicode Coding Schemes

• Data descriptions

• Sequential files

• Major COBOL verbs

• Pseudocode and program design

• Working with print files

• Intrinsic functions

• Using File Status

• The COPY statement

• Advanced currency capabilities

• Line Sequential files