Includes tutorials, example programs, programming exercises and self assessment questions.
Get your bearings: program structure, data declaration, and the four divisions.
Branch and loop: IF, EVALUATE, and PERFORM in all its forms.
Read and process file records one at a time — the bread-and-butter pattern for batch COBOL.
Edited PICTURE strings and the USAGE clause for richer data representations.
Print files, variable-length records, sorting, merging, and in-place updates.
Random-access alternatives to sequential files: relative and indexed organisations.
Arrays in COBOL — declaring tables, accessing them, and searching with SEARCH / SEARCH ALL.
Splitting a program across source files: sub-programs and the COPY verb.
Operate on character data: INSPECT, STRING, UNSTRING, reference modification, and intrinsic functions.
COBOL's built-in reporting facility — by example first, then by syntax and semantics.
Quick lookup for keywords and concepts encountered across the course.