Audience:

COBOL tutorial will be useful for anyone, be in a student, a software Engineer or anyone who is serious towards mastering the COBOL in Mainframe. Also, this COBOL tutorial will be helpful to mainframe programmer to increase their level of expertise in COBOL.

Pre-requisites:

There are no prerequisites for this COBOL tutorial. If you have fair idea on JCL, VSAM, FIle creation using option 3.2 and IBM Utilities like IEBGENER, then it will help you to understand COBOL better but this is not mandatory and you can still learn COBOL easily without any prior understanding of any programming language.

Would you like to learn TSO-ISPF ? Go to TSO-ISPF Tutorial

Would you like to learn JCL ? Go to JCL Tutorial

Would you like to learn VSAM ? Go to VSAM Tutorial

After completing the COBOL tutorial, you will be able to:

• Explain the concepts involved in COBOL programming.

• Identify how to code effectively in COBOL.

• Describe the problem solving concepts in COBOL.

Topics covered in COBOL Tutorial:

1. Introduction to COBOL
2. Program Terminology
3. Lanuage Structure
4. Program Format
5. Program structure
6. Identification Division
7. Environment Division
8. Data Division
9. Procedure Division
10. Basic Verbs
11. "Hello World" Program
12. Data Items
    • Introduction
    • Level Number
    • Data Name
    • Picture Clause
    • Value Clause
    • Usage Clause
    • Redefines Clause
    • Renames Clause
13. Edited Pictures Clause
    • Introduction
    • Simple Insertion
    • Special Insertion
    • Fixed Insertion
    • Floating Insertion
    • Zero Suppression and Replacement
14. Arithmetic Expressions
    • Introduction
    • Add Statement
    • Subtract Statement
    • Multiply Statement
    • Divide Statement
    • Compute Statement
15. Intrinsic Function
    • Introduction
    • Date Function
    • Example 1: Date Function
    • Example 2: Date Function
    • WHEN-COMPILED
16. Conditional Expressions
    • Introduction
    • IF Condition
    • Evaluate Statement
    • Class Condition
    • Condition-Name Condition
    • Relation Condition
    • Sign Condition
    • Swith-Status Condition
    • Complex Condition
    • Negated Simple Condition
    • Combined Condition
17. Scope Terminators
18. String Handling
    • String Statement
    • Unstring Statement
    • Inspect Statement
19. Perform Statements
20. COBOL Statements
    • INITIALIZE
    • CONTINUE
    • NEXT SENTENCE
    • COPY
    • INCLUDE
    • STOP RUN
    • EXIT
    • EXIT PROGRAM
    • GOBACK
21. COBOL Table/Arrays
    • Introduction
    • OCCURS Clause
    • ODO Clause
    • SUBSCRIPT Clause
    • INDEX Clause
    • Search Introduction
    • Search Statement
    • Search All Statement
22. File Handling
    • Introduction
    • Coding For Files
    • File Organization
    • File Access Mode
    • File Definition
    • File Handling Verbs
    • Example: READ
    • Example: WRITE
    • Example: REWRITE
    • Example: DELETE
23. Sort and Merge
    • Introduction
    • SORT File
    • SORT Input File
    • SORT Input Procedure
    • SORT Output File
    • SORT Output Procedure
    • SORT Statement
    • Merge Statement
    • SORT-RETURN
    • Example 1: SORT
    • Example 2: SORT
    • Example 1: Merge
24. Inter-Programming Communication
25. COBOL Sub-Program
26. COBOL Compile Process
27. Performance Tuning
28. Advance COBOL