1. What are special features of VS COBOL II?
The support of 31-bit addressing permits programs to operate "above the line " and to sue larger tables in larger programs. This added space allows VSAM buffers to be placed above the 16-meg line, therefore the buffers can be larger.

2. What are the scope terminators?
End-add,End-if,End-seaech,End-call,End-multiply,End-start,End-compute,End-perform, End-string,End-delete, End-read, End-subtract, End-divide, End-return, End-unstring, End-evaluate, End-rewrite, End-write.

3. What is an evaluate statement ? And its advantage ? Different types of evaluate ?
Evaluate is the alternate to the nested IF statements and is used to select from a list of processing actions. WHEN is used instead of IF to determine if the action is to be taken. Like the IF statement, the WHEN statement to be coded from most likely to the least likely occurrence. Like the nested IF, once the condition is true, control passes from the evaluate statement to the next statement in the program.

Types : EVALUATE TRUE and EVALUATE Variable-name.

4. What is case statement ?
In COBOL there is no separate case statement. Evaluate is the case statement in COBOL.

5. What is PERFORM statement and what are different types of PERFORMS? And When do use them?
A logical control statement used for executing a paragraph or series of paragraphs and then returning control to the original module.

PERFORM para-name, PERFORM UNTIL, PERFORM n TIMES, PERFORM TEST AFTER, PERFORM VARYING, IN-LINE PERFORM.

6.What is INLINE PERFORM?
In In-line PERFORM all instructions coded directly after the word PERFORM. There won't be any paragraph names. An END-PERFORM statement is coded at the end of an in-line perform.

7. What are the different types of COBOL you have worked ?
MS-COBOL, MF-COBOL, VS COBOL, VS COBOL II, VisualAge COBOL, etc.

8. What is the difference between Internal sort and External sort ?
Internal sort is sorting a file by using COBOL SORT verb. External sort is sorting a files by using JCL SORT utility.

9. What are the advantages of COBOLII ?
1. Operation of computer programs are efficient.

   a. It allows code to be shared.

   b. It optimizes code.

   c. It allows faster sorting.

   d. It eases program debugging and maintenance.

   e. VS COBOL II will run in the same environment as VS COBOL without impact on current operations.

   f. COBOL/CICS interaction is easier to work with because of defined interfaces.

2. It supports 31-bit addressing, which can make programmers to develop large applications.

3. An improved interface to CICS, which can simplify the way programmers build COBOL to be used with CICS.

4. It allows nesting of COPY statements.

5. VS COBOL II causes VSAM to put buffers above the 16 million byte line.

6. Programmers no longer have to define and manipulate a list of pointers  if their COBOL programs need to access data in locate mode.

7. Application Efficiency. - A programmer can request a VS COBOL II program be compiled to be reentrant. A reentrant program can be placed in a shared virtual area of storage, so that one copy of the program is used to satisfy all concurrent requests for the program.

8. VS COBOL II offers a debugging tool called COBTEST. It is a tool for examining, monitoring and controlling VS COBOL II programs in a test environment.



10. How do you sort using JCL ?
By using SORT utility.

11.What is STATIC CALL and DYNAMIC CALL?
In STATIC CALL, calling program name will be hard coded in the CALL statement, but in DYNAMIC

CALL, calling program name will be stored in a identifier.

In STATIC CALL, called subroutine is link-edited into calling program, where as in DYNAMIC CALL,

the subroutine & main program will exist as separate load modules.

A statically called subroutine will not be in its initial state the next time it is called unless you explicitly use

INITIAL or you do a  CANCEL. A dynamically called routine will always be in its initial state.

12. What are the three statements in JCL ?
JOB statement  - The purpose of the JOB statement is to inform the operating system of the start of a job, give necessary accounting information, and supply run parameters. Each job must begin with a single JOB statement.

EXEC statement - The purpose of the EXEC statement is to name a program or procedure to be executed. It follows the JOB statement. A job or cataloged procedure ca contain several EXEC statements. A job may have 255 EXEC statements.

DD statement - Data Definition statements describe each data set and request the allocation of I/O devices.

13. What info does the JOB statement contains ?
It contains the accounting information, run parameters like CLASS, MSGCLASS, MSGLEVEL, TYPRUN, NOTIFY, REGION, TIME, etc.

14.What is instream procedure and cataloged procedure ?
An instream procedure is basically the same as a cataloged procedure. The difference is that to execute an in-stream procedure one places it after the JOB statement and before the EXEC statement and must end with the PEND statement.

A cataloged procedure is cataloged on a procedure library and is called by specifying the procedure name on the EXEC statement. An in-stream procedure is useful to test the procedure before making it a cataloged procedure.

15. What is a DCB parameter?
The DCB parameter is used to provide complete information about a dataset (file characteristics) in the file's DATA CONTROL BLOCK(DCB). This parameter is coded only for new files. For existing file, the information is obtained from the data set label.

16. Name some of the utilities used in JCL .
IEFBR14, IEBCOPY, IEBGENER, IDCAMS, SORT, IEBCOMPR, IEHPROGM,

17. What utility is used for VSAM?
IDCAMS

18. How do you create s VSAM dataset ?
By using DEFINE CLUSTER command in IDCAMS utility.

19. How do you use IDCAMS in the JCL ?
By coding IDCAMS in EXEC statement.

20. What is cluster ?
In VSAM terms , a file is often called a cluster. A cluster is a set of catalog entries that represent a file catalog. It consists ofa data component and an index component.

21. What is SOC7 ?
It is an error caused by invalid data in a numeric field.

22. What is B37 ?
Storage violation error - can be due to various reasons. e.g.: READING a file that is not open, invalid address referenced due to subscript error.

23. Can you tell some SQLCODES ?
00- Successful execution.
+100 - No more rows found.
-180- date format error
-530- Foreign key violation
-803- Primary key violation.
-805- Package/Plan not found.
-903/-911/-913 - Dead lock.
-922 - Authorization failure.
24. What is the use of CICS ?
-Used as an interface between terminals and printers.

-Used as an interface with database access methods such as DB2, DL/I, and VSAM

25. What is CEMT and what is the use of it ?
It is CICS supplied Extended Master Terminal Transaction.

It displays/manipulates CICS control environment interactively.

26. What is the difference between START and XCTL ?
The XCTL command transfers control o another program (having the same transaction ID), while the START command initiates a new transaction. The XCTL continues the task on the same terminal. START can initiatesa task on another terminal.