Designed in 1959 as part of a US Department of Defense project to create a portable programming language for data processing, COBOL is used primarily in business, finance, and administrative systems for governments and companies today.
The acronym stands for Common Business Oriented Language.
COBOL is used for writing application programs, and cannot be used to write system software. It is commonly used in applications with huge data processing demands.
COBOL is a high-level language. Computers are only capable of understanding machine code, which consists of a binary stream of zeros and ones. In order to be used by the computer, the COBOL code has to be converted into machine code, which is accomplished by running the program source through a compiler. When a compiler is run, it checks first for syntax errors, then converts the code into machine language. The compiler creates a load module, an output file that contains the executable code in the form of zeros and ones.
Created in 1959 by the Conference/Committee on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL), the Department of Defense forced computer manufacturers to provide it, accounting for its rapid adoption. The language was revised and released as COBOL-61 in 1961. In 1968, COBOL-68 was approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as a standard programming language for commercial use. Revised again in 1974 and 1985, COBOL continued the practice of naming new versions after the year of release, creating COBOL-74 AND COBOL-85. In 2002, Object-Oriented COBOL was released (also known as COBOL-2002), which included the ability to use encapsulated objects as a normal part of COBOL programming. COBOL-2002 was not well supported, and was replaced by COBOL-2014 in 2014, which replaced portable arithmetic results with IEEE 754 data types, made some major features optional, and added method overloading. Dynamic capacity tables, which had been dropped in 2002, were brought back.
COBOL was the first widely used high-level programming language. As an English-like language, it is considered to be user-friendly. Programming is accomplished through the use of simple English words. It is also a self-documenting language
COBOL is a robust language, with debugging and testing tools available for most computer platforms, and is still in use by several major corporations and governmental agencies.
The focus of this category is on the programming language known as COBOL.
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Headquartered in Gainesville, Texas, the Cobol Cowboys provides software, development, support, maintenance, and deliverables to its clients, with its primary focus on clients who currently use COBOL and assisting with their deployment of new releases. The programming environments that the company assists with include COBOL, Micro Focus, Java, CICS, IBM-DB2, SQL, and Assembly Language. The use of COBOL is highlighted in its COBOL Today section.
http://cobolcowboys.com/
Founded in 2008, COBOL-IT represents a modernization of the COBOL programming language, offering a robust product suite that includes a COBOL compiler and a migration process that allows companies to migrate, deploy, and maintain their legacy COBOL applications. Its products include the COBOL-IT Compiler Suite, COBOL-IT Developer Studio, and the CitSQL Family of products that extends COBOL-IT’s embracement of open-source solutions.
https://www.cobol-it.com/
Seeking to be a community of job seekers and employers, the site brings COBOL programmers and developers together with those who need their services and expertise. Employers may register, sign in to their account, post jobs, and view other employers, while job seekers register, sign in, and search available jobs. Listed jobs may be sought by keyword and location. Client testimonials are published to the site. Links to websites and other online resources are included.
https://www.getcoboljobs.com/
Hosted by SourceForge, GnuCOBOL was formerly known as OpenCOBOL, when it was written by Keisuke Nishida and Roger While from 2001 to 2012 when it took its current name as well as additional authors. As free software, it can be downloaded, redistributed, and/or modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. Its features, manuals, guides, and support data are published, and it can be downloaded, with source codes.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol/
Previously known as OpenCOBOL, GnuCOBOL is a free, open-source, implementation of the COBOL programming language. Hosted on SourceForge, the site features several guides to the language by Gary Cutler, Brian Tiffin, Bill Klein, László Erdős, Arnold Trembley, Edward Hart, and Simon Sobisch. and they include quick references, programmer’s guides, sample programs, grammar documentation and sources, build guides, and other resources.
https://open-cobol.sourceforge.io/
Developed by Envyr Corporation, ICOBOL and its VX COBOL dialects are the Cary, North Carolina company’s primary products. It also produces cgiCOBOL, which is a basic web server runtime environment that includes a special version of the ICOBOL runtime system. Its products are highlighted, with details of its features, documentation, and information about its support policies, and pricing. Current and archived releases may be downloaded from the site.
https://www.icobol.com/
Available for the Intel architecture and the FreeBSD, Linux, and MinGW on Windows platforms, TinyCOBOL is a COBOL compiler distributed under the GNU General Public License, while its run time libraries are distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License. A history of the project is put forth, along with development information, latest and previous releases, documentation, presentations, CVS snapshots, and other packages that will be needed.
http://tiny-cobol.sourceforge.net/
Presented by Tutorials Point, an online tutorials site, the COBOL section features an introduction and overview of the programming language, discusses its environment setup and program structure, then goes on to teach basic syntax, data types, basic verbs, data layout, conditional statements, loop statements, string handling, table processing, file handling, file organization, and others, as well as offering various resources and reading recommendations.
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cobol/
Founded in Italy, where it still has offices, its corporate headquarters are now in San Diego, California. The focus of the company’s business is on the development of COBOL applications, its flagship program being isCOBOL, a platform-compliant COBOL compiler that generates object-oriented code that runs on any platform that supports a JAVE runtime environment, and its isCOBOL IDE. Its products, services, support and training platforms, and product documentation are featured.
http://www.veryant.com/
