Practical COBOL for VME superNOVA Programmers

Prerequisites:

Course Description:

An intensive, very practical event, which requires evening work most days and therefore residential booking is recommended, designed and delivered by experienced COBOL consultant lecturers. To consolidate the more formal sessions, extensive, supervised, hands-on practical work is integrated into the structure of the course. Tuition is supplemented by comprehensive Course Manuals.

This VME COBOL programming course provides new entrants to the IT industry with a solid foundation in the use of COBOL. Using structured methods, participants will learn to design, code and test COBOL applications in a VME environment. In addition to providing participants with the skills to utilise the full COBOL syntax, this event also provides them with a good grounding in a basic program design method based on Jackson like principles.

Participants will acquire the knowledge and skills to:

• Use Jackson-based techniques to design programs
• Write COBOL source programs
• Write the SCL required to drive a suite of COBOL programs
• Use the SCL/COBOL interface
• Use the DDS for copying file definitions
• Create a program test plan and the associated test data
• Effectively use ITS (Interactive Testing System)
• Use VME utilities (to sort, merge, copy, list and match records)
• Design and code (called) modules and handle parameters

This course includes the following modules:

Course Content

• VME overview
• SCL/COBOL communication
• Filestore
• Low volume input/output
• Catalogue
• Work introduction commands
• MAC
• More advanced data manipulation
• SCL concepts
• Character manipulation
• HELP systems
• Handling variable length records
• VME screen editor
• Modular programming
• Types of programming task
• Types of module
• Structured Program Design
• Linkage Section
• Data and program structures
• External clause
• Schematic logic
• Other language Modules
• Fusion of data structures
• Testing strategies
• Collating files
• Structure considerations
• Comparison with flowcharts
• Production of a Testing Plan
• Introduction to COBOL
• COBOL debugging facilities
• Use and structure of language
• ITS (Interactive Testing System)
• Language specification and coding conventions
• Optional use of Program Master
• Identification and Environment Divisions
• Utilities
• Structure and layout
• Sort/Merge Records
• Data Division
• Copy Records
• File and record descriptions
• List Records
• Working storage
• Match Records
• Redefining data areas
• Append Records
• Data Manipulation
• Initialising data areas
• Moving data in store
• Editing fields for printed output
• Arithmetic
• Arithmetic verbs and expressions
• Dealing with errors
• Sequence Control
• Performing paragraphs and sections
• Conditional statements
• Unconditional branching
• Internal Data Formats
• Data Dictionary System
• DDS Concepts
• Copy DDS file descriptions
• Viewing using DISPLAY and LIST
• Table handling
• Single and multi-level tables
• Subscripting
• Handling iterations
• Indexed tables
• Searching tables
• File structures and manipulation
• Sequential
• Indexed sequential
• Hashed Random
• Relative
• Use of System Control Language
• Create and assign files and libraries
• Compile, run and edit COBOL programs
• Safeguard files