This project is a set of training materials and labs for a "Getting Started" level course on COBOL.
To begin, select a recent release of the course. Under a given release, you should see two assets.
- The COBOL Programming with VSCode PDF asset contains the course instructions.
- The Source code asset contains everything that was in the project when the release was published.
To complete the course, you will also need to do one of the following:
- Select a provider below and follow their registration process. Once complete, you should be given system details to use in the course.
- Upload the source code for the course (located in the Labs folder) to your mainframe environment.
If you run into any issues, please don't hesitate to reach out on our slack channel.
You can connect with the community in a variety of ways...
- #cobol-programming-course channel on Open Mainframe Project Slack
- 'COBOL technical questions' category on Open Mainframe Project Community Forums
- COBOL Programming Course Discussion Mailing list
These materials are being used by other organizations to provide COBOL training to the community. This project, nor Open Mainframe Project, doesn't review, maintain, or endorse any one of these particular providers. If you are using these materials in your training materials, feel free to edit and issue a pull request to have it included.
- IBM has provided a free environment for completing the labs.
- IBM has provided a free trial to IDz environment.
The PDF is built using the following pandoc command. Note: pdflatex is required. MiKTeX can be installed to accomodate this.
pandoc "COBOL Programming with VSCode.md" -o "COBOL Programming with VSCode.pdf" --number-sections --toc -B Front_Matter.tex --listings
Front_Matter.tex contains the content before the table of contents. COBOL Programming with VSCode.md contains the body. The command combines the two, generates the section numbers and table of contents for the body, and outputs COBOL Programming with VSCode.pdf
Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.
All contributions must align with the Open Mainframe Project contribution guidelines, including having a DCO signoff on all commits.
This project is openly governed as defined in GOVERNANCE.md.
The courseware materials were made available through a joint collaboration IBM, it's clients, and American River College and proposed as a new project by IBM.