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 more lines of code existing and billions being written annually.

Micro Focus has been the market leader and provider of distributed COBOL development tooling for nearly 40 years. Micro Focus's COBOL has evolved and today it differs significantly to 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 and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

Where to start?

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

• A Micro Focus course introducing you to COBOL programming, Visual COBOL: Modern COBOL for the Next Generation.

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

• Once you have completed the course, continue by creating your first First Hello COBOL World Application.

What next?

Micro Focus provides a variety of resources that illustrate how you can use COBOL to develop applications:

• Check the available tutorials for examples of applications that help you solve particular programming cases.
• See the samples - click Start > All Programs > Micro Focus Visual COBOL > Samples.
• Check Procedural COBOL Compared with Managed COBOL which covers introductory information about the COBOL language including the difference between native and managed 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. Managed COBOL is COBOL with extensions to support the .NET framework. It offers support for object orientation and access to the .NET CLR. 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.
  • Managed COBOL Reference
  • Comparison of COBOL with Other Managed Languages
  • Tutorials on managed COBOL