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.
Author Name: Tim Slate
Author Description:
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

Table of Contents

• Course Overview
  1min
• Getting Started
  13mins
• Understanding COBOL Source Code Structure
  10mins
• Getting Friendly with Flat Files, VSAM Files, and Report Files
  14mins
• Using Strange Data Types
  42mins
• Making COBOL Do Your Bidding
  56mins
• Seeing Your First COBOL Program in Action
  22mins