New to COBOL

COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) was developed in 1959 and, since then, has been used as the basis for many business and government applications. Reports show that over 80% of the world's business applications run on COBOL with billions of lines of code written already and billions more being written annually.

Micro Focus has been the provider and market leader of distributed COBOL development tooling for over 40 years. Micro Focus's COBOL has evolved and today it differs significantly from the COBOL language of 1959, embracing object-orientation and enabling you to write code that takes full advantage of new operating systems and platforms such as Microsoft's .NET framework, .NET, and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

Where to start?

Micro Focus provides the following resources to help you get started with COBOL programming:

• An introductory course to COBOL programming, Visual COBOL: Modern COBOL for the Next Generation.

  This course is the ideal first step on your journey to learning about the COBOL language and how to take advantage of what Enterprise Developer can do for you. After taking the course you will have a good knowledge of the basics of COBOL and Enterprise Developer, and will be ready to build on that general knowledge by learning more about taking full advantage of Enterprise Developer to meet the specific requirements of your applications.

  The course is available from a link in your Electronic Delivery Receipt email which you were sent with details about your license. Follow the link and click the Documentation tab.

  Although the course uses Visual COBOL to demonstrate the programming concepts, all of the information in the course applies equally to Enterprise Developer.

  This is a standard COBOL programming course. It does not include instructions about how to create applications that use Mainframe Subsystem Support (such as CICS, IMS, JCL and PL/I).

• Once you have completed the course, continue by Creating Your First Hello COBOL World Application.

What next?

Once you've used the above resources to see how to get started with COBOL programming you're ready to dig a little deeper and learn more about how you can use COBOL to develop your applications. Micro Focus provides a variety of resources to enable you to do this:

• COBOL Programming for Business Success - a web-based training course teaching you how to design and code COBOL programs.
• Check the available tutorials for examples of applications that help you solve particular programming cases.
• See the samples - click Start > All Programs > Micro Focus Enterprise Developer > Samples > Visual COBOL Samples.
• Check Procedural COBOL Compared with JVM COBOL which covers introductory information about the COBOL language including the difference between native and JVM COBOL code.
• Refer to the COBOL Language Reference for in-depth information about the syntax and the usage of the COBOL language.
• Explore the power of COBOL to prepare your applications for interaction with modern day technologies. JVM COBOL is COBOL with extensions to support the JVM. It offers support for object-orientation and access to the JVM. For more see:
  • Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming for COBOL Developers
  • Visual COBOL - A Developer's Guide to Modern COBOL - in PDF format, available from the Micro Focus Web site.
  • Executable File Formats
  • JVM COBOL Reference
  • Comparison of COBOL with Other Managed Languages
  • Tutorial: Creating a COBOL JVM Application