ChiCOBOL

Most COBOL programs today are run in IBM mainframe shops. Unfortunately, new COBOL users may have difficulty gaining access to an IBM mainframe on which to acquire experience with IBM COBOL, JCL, creating and editing datasets, etc.

The Hercules mainframe emulator offers one route to gaining a certain degree of proficiency with IBM mainframe COBOL. Admittedly the legally available operating systems, COBOL compiler, and JCL version for this purpose are obsolete. However, due to backward compatibility, they’re not as irrelevant as you might think.

Jay Moseley is among the Herculeans who’ve provided a significant amount of documentation for new users. He identifies the available compiler as “IBM OS American National Standard COBOL – version designation: V2 LVL78 01 MAY 72″.

Kevin Leonard of the Hercules-390 forum identified the corresponding IBM COBOL language reference manual as GC28-6396-4. Through interlibrary loan, I’ve just received 3 copies of this manual.

We might as well capitalize on the error which led the University of Toledo to ship 3 copies of the same book. If you’re in the Chicago area, and would like to have a look at one of the spare copies of the manual, drop me a line at chicobol@comcast.net.

The Chicago area is home to a well-established certification institute, which offers a certificate of competency in the COBOL language. The Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals is based in Des Plaines, Illinois. 

According to ICCP’s website, “It is the world’s leading certification body for information and communications technology (ICT) professionals.” This claim is quite credible. Their list of constituent societies includes the Association for Computing Machinery, and their business partners include IBM Corporation.

ICCP’s COBOL language certification exam may be taken for a fee of $145. Practice exams and other materials are also available. For further information, please see ICCP’s home page.

This blog is intended to serve as an interim forum for the Chicago COBOL Users Group (ChiCOBOL), until list administration instructions are received from COBUG. They had several new local user groups come online simultaneously, so there’s a bit of a backlog.

Anyone may comment. Users who would like to be able to post new items on this blog will first need a WordPress account. Then please send an e-mail to chicobol@comcast.net, requesting that your WordPress account be added as a user for this blog.