COBOL stands for Common Business Oriented Language and is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It was created in 1959 by CODASYL and was partly based on the programming language FLOW-MATIC designed by Grace Hopper. COBOL is primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is still widely used in applications deployed on mainframe computers, such as large-scale batch and transaction processing jobs.
COBOL is a domain-specific language, specific to the particular domain of business programming. It is mainly focused on solving business problems and is used to develop business-oriented applications in the finance and human resources industries. COBOL uses English words and phrases to make it easier for ordinary business users to understand.
COBOL is an easy-to-learn, standard language that can be compiled and executed on a variety of computers. It supports a wide syntax vocabulary and features an uncluttered coding style. COBOLs advanced file handling capabilities enable it to handle huge volumes of data. COBOL still handles more than 70% of the worlds business transactions.
COBOL is not designed to handle scientific applications and has a very wordy syntax. The time needed to compile a COBOL program is quite greater than machine-oriented programming languages. COBOL is not block-structured like nearly any other language and has a major design goal for COBOL from the first was that it should be "self-documenting" with an English-like syntax.
In summary, COBOL is a programming language designed for business use, primarily used in finance and administrative systems for companies and governments. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is easy-to-learn, standard language that can be compiled and executed on a variety of computers. It is still widely used in applications deployed on mainframe computers, such as large-scale batch and transaction processing jobs.
