Folio Society Best Sellers List Report (Exam Paper)

Time to complete

Allow 4-6 hours continuous.

Program Download

BestSellers.cbl is a model answer. Don't look at this until you have made your own attempt at the program.

Example Output

BSList.rpt is the report.

Example Input

BookSales.dat is the sequential Book Sales File

BookMF.dat is the sequential Book Master File

Exam Practice

If you want to try out the exam under the same conditions as our students you can write the program in a printed version of FBSOutline.Doc. This is an MS-Word file containing the program outline, the data files and the report produced by running the program.

Don't forget to have the COBOL Metalanguage elements available for reference.

The time allotted for the exam was 2.5 hours.

Major Constructs

Sequential Files, Print Files, SORT with Input Procedure and Output Procedure, Tables

Introduction

The Folio Society is a Book Club that sells fine books to customers all over the world. Each time a book is sold the Book-Number, the Number-of-Copies and a one character field indicating the Sale-Status (Normal Sale, Free Gift, Reduced Price (N,F,R)) is written to a Book-Sales-File.

A program is required to print a list of the ten best selling books (by copies sold) in the Book Club from the Book-Sales-File. Only Normal Sale books should be considered.

Files

Book Master File

The Book Master File is a sequential file sequenced on ascending Book-Number. The records have the following description;

FIELD	TYPE	LENGTH	VALUE
Book-Number	9	5	00001-99999
Book-Title	X	25	-
Author-Name	X	25	-

Book Sales File

The Book Sales File is not in any particular sequence but we are guaranteed that a Book-Number that occurs in the file will have a corresponding entry in the Book Master File.

FIELD	TYPE	LENGTH	VALUE
Book-Number	9	5	00001-99999
Number-Of-Copies	9	2	1-99
Sale-Status	X	1	N,F,R

Processing

Sort the Book Sales file throwing away unwanted records (F,R). Accumulate the sales for a book. If the book is in the top ten get the Book-Title and Author-Name from the Book Master File. When the Sorted Book Sales File has been processed, print out the top ten best sellers.

Print Specification

See print specification and example report.
The Sales field should be zero suppressed and have commas inserted as appropriate.

Thumbnail of the print layout specification for the Best Sellers Report, showing column headings and sample rows for book title, author name, and sales figures.

Click for full size version