Basic COBOL Programming

The basic COBOL application programming class provides the student an opportunity to exercise a number of programming techniques using the COBOL programming language. COBOL has been used to develop commercial applications and is still in wide use today in many large organizations. The class covers the use of structured programming techniques to design, code and test COBOL programs. This class will teach MOVEs, IF…ELSE, PERFORMs, I/O, math operations and array processing techniques. Weekly programming projects will be assigned to give students ample opportunity to learn the COBOL programming language. 

The topics covered include:

• Use of structured programming techniques to develop COBOL programs

• Design, coding, and testing of COBOL programs that

  • Move data in storage

  • Edit both input and output data

  • Use arithmetic operations (add, subtract, multiply, divide) on data

  • Use input/output operations

  • Involve the use of control break techniques

  • Involve the use of table processing techniques

  • Sort data using bubble sort and COBOL sorting

  • Perform internal subroutines (paragraphs)

  • Call external subroutines

• The following COBOL statements will be covered and used in the class

  • MOVE

  • ADD, SUBTRACT, MULTIPLY and DIVIDE

  • COMPUTE

  • IF... THEN....ELSE

  • PERFORM

  • PERFORM VARYING

  • CALL

  • SEARCH

A number of programming projects are assigned to give the student ample opportunity to design, code, and test structured COBOL programs that use multidimensional arrays, I/O, math operations, searches, and sorts.