COBOL

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 application programs and we cannot use it to write system software. The applications like those in defense domain, insurance domain, etc. which require huge data processing make extensive use of COBOL. Inventor -

Grace Murray Hopper Vassar's Grace Murray Hopper invented the COBOL programming language.

Division -

, the statements, entires, paragraphs and sections of a COBOL source program are grouped into four divisions that are sequenced in the following order:

• The Identification Division.

• The Environment Division.

• The Data Division.

• The Procedure Division.

File extension

COBOL Typing disciplineWeak, staticFilename extensions.cbl , .cob , .cpy.

Major implementations

GnuCOBOL, IBM COBOL, Micro Focus Visual COBOLDialects.