Murach’s Mainframe COBOL

Section 1: The essence of COBOL programming

In chapters 1, 2, and 3, your students learn how to code and test simple programs that prepare reports. In chapters 4 and 5, they learn how to design, code, and test more complicated programs using the best structured programming techniques. In chapter 6, they learn the mainframe skills that they will need for working with data.

Section 2: Other COBOL essentials

In this section, your students will learn how to work with intrinsic functions, dates, characters, tables, copy members, and subprograms. You can assign these chapters in sequence or in any order you prefer.

Section 3: COBOL for working with files

In this section, your students will learn how to work with the three types of COBOL file organizations: sequential, indexed, and relative. Because file processing (not database processing) is a major feature of many mainframe programs, these are essential skills for COBOL programmers.

Section 4: The IBM mainframe COBOL environment

When you work on a mainframe, learning how to use COBOL is just part of the challenge. You also need to learn how to work productively in the IBM mainframe environment. So in this section, your students will learn:

• how to use ISPF, TSO, and JCL for compiling and testing programs
• how to use Access Method Services (AMS) for working with VSAM files
• how CICS and DB2 work with COBOL for interactive and database programs
• how to become an effective maintenance programmer

This book is especially suited for courses that are intended to teach COBOL as a job skill because almost all COBOL jobs are in mainframe shops. In fact, there isn’t another COBOL book on the market that presents the structured design and programming techniques that are used in the best COBOL shops, not to mention the special mainframe skills that are required. But with our book, you can give your students the real-world perspective they’ll need.

Like all our books, this one has features that you won’t find in competing books. But here are four that are specific to this book:

• In chapters 4 and 5, your students learn the structured programming methods that are used in the best mainframe shops. Paul Noll, a COBOL trainer and consultant, pioneered these methods way back in the mid-1970s. They became an ad hoc standard in many mainframe shops by the mid-1980s. And no other COBOL book presents real-world methods like these.
• Besides teaching standard COBOL, which can be run on any computer system, ours is the only book that shows your students how to work in the IBM mainframe environment with facilities like ISPF, Access Method Services, DB2, and CICS.
• 14 full programs and dozens of coding segments illustrate best coding practices.
• This book finishes with a chapter on maintenance programming, which accounts for 70% or more of all COBOL programming done today.

Since this book teaches mainframe COBOL, it is designed for use with an IBM mainframe. That means that it is best used in curricula that provide free access to an IBM mainframe. Then, your students can compile and test their exercises and projects on that mainframe.

If your school doesn’t have access to an IBM mainframe, you can still use this book to teach COBOL programming. That’s because this book teaches standard COBOL, which will run under any COBOL compiler, so your students can use it with COBOL compilers that run on their PCs or on a network. Then, you can enhance the course by teaching mainframe programming skills as information-only (no hands-on).

A third alternative is to teach the entire course as information-only. Then, you won’t need a computer lab at all. This can work if your students have already taken other programming courses and just need to understand what’s different about mainframe programming and where COBOL fits in the IT job market.

For teaching COBOL as a first language

Unlike other COBOL books, chapter 1 of Murach’s Mainframe COBOL starts with a simple interactive program instead of a report-preparation program. This gets the students programming right away without all the added complexity of working with

files. Then, chapter 2 shows the students how to compile and test their programs.

With this approach, the students are ready for report-preparation programs when they are introduced to them in chapter 3. So that chapter shows them how to develop a simple listing program with headings and a total line. From that point on, the students can build rapidly on what they’ve learned.

For teaching COBOL as a second language

The approach that I’ve just described works equally well for students who are learning COBOL after they’ve learned a language like Java, Visual Basic, or C#. After just five chapters, these students can clearly see the differences between structured programming and object-oriented programming. They can see how easy it is to use COBOL for working with files, records, and fields. And if you jump to section 3 after section 1, your students will start to understand why COBOL will still be around 15 years from now.

In contrast, a leading college textbook takes four chapters to show how to develop a report program that lists the records in a file…with no headings and no total lines! At a pace like that, is it any wonder that a modern student is bored by COBOL?