Courses we teach: COBOL
Enterprise COBOL Update I:
Essentials - 2 days
Enterprise COBOL Update II: Unicode and XML Support -
2 days
Structured COBOL Workshop for Enterprise COBOL -
5 days
Advanced Topics in COBOL (Enterprise, z/OS) - 3
days
Enterprise COBOL Debugging & Maintenance - 2
days
Interactive COBOL Debugging with Debug Tool - 1 day
VSAM For COBOL Programmers - 2 days
Converting to COBOL II - 2
days
Converting to COBOL for OS/390 & VM - 2 days
Interactive COBOL Debugging, Xpediter - 1 day
COBOL (which stands for COmmon Business Oriented Language) is the most pervasive application development programming language in the world today. Although COBOL has been around for over 40 years, it is a dynamic language, constantly being revised, updated, and upgraded.
The International Standards Organization (ISO) is the body of people who establish and update the standards for the COBOL language. ANSI (American National Standards Institute) is the American representative to ISO. The most recent standards have been published in 1968, 1974, and 1985 (amended in 1989). A new standard is currently being developed. The latest standard was approved in 2002, although few vendors have supplied a fully compliant compiler.
IBM (as well as other companies) produces compilers that implement the standards as they are available. Sometimes a company will even include a feature before it gets into the standard (since it takes a long time to update each standard, sometimes a company feels it can't wait until the next standard will become available).
The most recent IBM compilers for the mainframe are these:
OS/VS COBOL - supports the '68 and '74 standards; for MVS and OS/390
COBOL for DOS/VS - supports the '68 and '74 standards for DOS/VS and later
VS COBOL II - supports the '74 and the '85 standards; available on MVS, OS/390, and various releases of VSE and VM
COBOL/370 (version 1, release 1 of the latest compiler) - supports the '85 standard, including the '89 amendmentment; available on MVS, OS/390, and various releases of VSE and VM
COBOL for MVS & VM (version 1 release 2 of the above compiler) - supports the '85 standard, the '89 amendment, and some enhancements from the upcoming standard (primarily Object Oriented COBOL and improved interoperability with C)
COBOL for OS/390 & VM (version 2 release 1, and version 2 release 2 of the above compiler) - supports everything above along with some additional enhancements (relatively minor from the external perspective of the language)
IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS and OS/390 (version 3 release 1, version 3 release 2, version 3 release 3, version 3 release 4, version 4 release 1) - supports Unicode, interoperability with JAVA, DB2 and CICS co-processors, an XML parser, and more
Also, IBM provides COBOL compilers for its OS/400, OS/2, and AIX environments and for MicroSoft Windows platforms
Our course Structured COBOL Workshop for Enterprise COBOL is designed with the Enterprise COBOL compiler as the starting point, although most of the content also works for the COBOL for OS/390 & VM compiler.
Note also that our DB2, CICS, LE, and Advanced TSO courses all allow the student to work the labs in COBOL.
Note that from COBOL/370 on, IBM COBOL compilers need to have a product called Language Environment (LE) available for run-time support. LE is available on MVS, OS/390, z/OS, VSE, VM, OS/400, and in a limited degree on OS/2.
We provide training on Language Environment topics as well as on the supported languages
The following courses are multi-lingual and the labs may be run in COBOL if the student prefers:
Introduction
to TSO and REXX APIs
DB2 Application Coding
DB2 Stored Procedures
Secrets of Inter-Language Communication in z/OS
Using LE Services in z/OS
Interactive Multi-Language Debugging with Debug Tool
Developing Applications for z/OS UNIX
Creating and Using DLLs
in z/OS
Introduction to CGIs on z/OS
this page last updated: 08 February, 2008
Copyright © 2008 by The Trainer's Friend, Inc.