What is the Full form of COBOL?

The full form of COBOL is Common Business Oriented Language. COBOL is an English compiled programming language intended for commercial application. It is procedural, imperative & has been object-oriented from 2002. COBOL is mainly used by government and corporations in finance, industry & administrative structures. COBOL is also commonly used during mainframe computer applications, including massive task & transaction processing work.

Because of its diminishing success as well as the retirement of experienced COBOL programmers, applications have been adapted to different formats, updated in modern languages or substituted with software programs. Much of COBOL ‘s programming is now primarily to support current applications, although many major financial companies still were designing new COBOL programs in 2006 given the speed of mainframe operation.

History of COBOL

• COBOL was discovered in the 1950s by a Grace Hopper. Earlier each device maker is expected to run a program using their computer language.
• COBOL’s programs could run on computers other than one from different manufacturers and be therefore quickly adopted by the DOD (Department of Defence) because they had to purchase machines from different buyers.
• It has undergone several changes and updates from 1960.
• The ANSI (American National Standards Institute) has created several COBOL updates, for example, COBOL- 68, COBOL-74, COBOL- 85 and COBOL-2002 respectively.
• Thus, COBOL format is therefore no longer accepted by modern devices, and it is termed as Legacy Language.
• COBOL has been used primarily in large organizations such as the army, government, large-scale companies. Also, a few banks in the USA.

Features of COBOL

• COBOL’s implementations are highly comprehensive.
• Long live COBOL applications.
• COBOL’s systems can handle massive amounts of data.
• Frameworks on COBOL are simple to understand.
• COBOL’s systems are portable, which means anybody can use.
• COBOL’s applications can be easily managed.
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