COBOL Level 2: Advanced

Course Overview

This class is designed for students to improve their knowledge of COBOL tools. Each student will write, execute and debug COBOL programs that stress the advanced features of COBOL. This will include multi-dimensional and variable length tables, multi-program and sub-program calls, and VSAM file manipulation. Sorting, merging and programming standards and style will be addressed.

Audience

Application programmers with some experience in COBOL who want formal training in the advanced language features and programming techniques.

Prerequisites

Attending our COBOL Programming Part 1 course or equivalent knowledge is assumed.

Course Outline

• Review of COBOL Concepts
• What is COBOL programming?
• How does it fit in the environment?
• Basic terms and language structure
• Programming fundamentals
• COBOL ground rules
• JCL concepts
• Advanced COBOL Logic
• Compound IF statement
• IF logic guidelines
• The NOT statement
• Condition names 88-Levels
• The SET statement for condition names
• Testing for blank numeric fields
• COBOL 85 changes
• Control Break Logic
• Concepts
• One-Level control breaks
• Two-Level control breaks
• Page overflow
• Error testing
• Table Processing
• Sequential tables
• The SEARCH statement
• The PERFORM VARYING statement
• Variable length tables
• The SEARCH ALL statement
• Multi-dimensional tables
• COBOL Sort and Merge
• Basic SORT requirements
• The SELECT and SD statements
• The SORT statement
• USING and GIVING options
• Basic MERGE requirements
• Sorting table entries
• Other sort logic
• VSAM File Concepts
• File structures
• KSDS files
• ESDS files
• RRDS files
• Alternate indexes
• VSAM Processing Statements
• The INPUT-OUTPUT section
• The FILE section
• The OPEN and CLOSE statements
• The READ statement
• The WRITE statement
• Programming VSAM Files
• File status
• Random processing
• Sequential processing
• Relative record processing
• Multi-Programming
• Program linkage
• Entry points
• Passing data between programs
• Nested programs
• The CALL statement
• Debugging COBOL Programs
• Concepts
• Types of errors
• Debugging mode
• The STATE option
• Storage dumps
• Summary
• COBOL future
• Structures programming in COBOL
• COBOL 85 and the future