History and conditions of use
The current state of COBOL
Development environment
Presentation of COBOL for connoisseurs of other
COBOL 85 languages – detail and alternatives

Structure of a COBOL program
Declaration
Data, instructions
Compilation – minimal application

Workshop: a first COBOL application

Basic syntax, alignment
Creation of variables and edit variables
Arithmetic operators
Control structures: if, evaluate, « on » structures and condition variables
Perform for loops, and arrays;
Search in tables
Complete algorithms in COBOL

Practical workshop: a minimal management application

Read and write access to a console
Access to files from COBOL
Files: types of files and access
Consideration of performance and optimization; break, synchronizations, etc.

Practical workshop: recording and multiple readings; simulation of any errors

Creation of paragraphs and sections
Calls from Perform (and comparison with Go To)
Presentation of subroutines
Calls between programs
Detailed syntax
Comparison report and common formats

Practical workshop: reorganization and completion of a management application

COBOL 74: functions
Usual functions: character strings, dates, math
COBOL 2002
Progressive depreciation and modern nonsense
Presentation of object-oriented programming with COBOL
Unicode, XML and other modernizations

Practical workshop: complex interactive application in COBOL