COBOL stands for Common Business Oriented Language.The US Department of Defense, in a conference, formed CODASYL (Conference on Data Systems Language) to develop a language for business data processing needs which is now known as COBOL.

COBOL is used for writing apppcation programs and we cannot use it to write system software. The apppcations pke those in defense domain, insurance domain, etc. which require huge data processing make extensive use of COBOL.

Audience

This tutorial is designed for software programmers who would pke to learn the basics of COBOL. It provides enough understanding on COBOL programming language from where you can take yourself to a higher level of expertise.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with this tutorial, you should have a basic understanding of computer programming terminologies and JCL. A basic understanding of any of the programming languages will help you understand the concepts of COBOL programming and move fast on the learning track.