Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Objectives At the completion of this subject students should know about interactive and multi-user environments; understand the problems associated with large scale legacy systems and approaches to integrating them into new systems; and be able to implement and maintain programs in COBOL in a VMS environment.
Synopsis Problems of maintaining and interfacing of large scale legacy software, direct access file structures in commercial environments, dynamic file binding, interactive programming in a multi-user environment. Data structures as implemented in COBOL, arrays, linked lists, state transition tables. Data definition and manipulation, search, sort. Data hiding, encapsulation, parameter passing, program efficiency. Using the VMS operating system: logging on/off, directories, creating, copying, removing files, file access, EVE editor, compile, link and user libraries.
Assessment Examination (3 hours): 40% + Unit test: 20% + Practical work: 40%