Mainframe COBOL Programming: Beginner to Expert

Learn COBOL from scratch and build the skills you need to work on enterprise systems, banking applications and legacy codebases. The course starts with program structure and carries on through files, VSAM, embedded SQL, maintaining code you didn’t write, and checking a COBOL to Java migration.

Course Curriculum

• Program structure and syntax: the four divisions, fixed-format source columns, and PIC clauses.

• Arithmetic a bank would accept: COMPUTE and ROUNDED, edited pictures, signed fields and intermediate results.

• Logic and control flow: IF, EVALUATE, 88-level condition names and the PERFORM statement.

• Tables and storage: OCCURS, SEARCH and SEARCH ALL, two-dimensional tables, DISPLAY, COMP and COMP-3, REDEFINES and reference modification.

• Modular programs: CALL, the LINKAGE SECTION, contained programs and copybooks.

• File handling and VSAM: SELECT, ASSIGN and FD, FILE STATUS, KSDS, ESDS and RRDS clusters, indexed reads, alternate keys, SORT and MERGE, control break reports, and matching a transaction file against a master file.

• Embedded SQL: EXEC SQL blocks, host variables, the SQLCA and SQLCODE, null indicators, cursors, commit scope and restart logic after a failed batch.

• Maintaining COBOL programs: reading structure before logic, following PERFORM THRU and GO TO, tracing a field from its copybook, scoping a change, running a regression and reading run-time errors.

• Verifying a COBOL to Java migration: generated Java structure, packed decimal against BigDecimal, EBCDIC and ASCII collating order, and transaction boundaries.