Object Oriented Programming in COBOL 2000

Object Orientation

Object Orientation is the big new programming paradigm of these days. “COBOL 2000″ (see separate document for more details and other features planned for the new standard) will provide full support for the constructs of Object Oriented Programming (OOP). Superficially, the role of OOP in COBOL 2000 is similar to that of Structured Programming in COBOL 85. There is, however, a very important difference: While Structured Programming was meant to be an alternative to traditional, “spaghetti-oriented” programming, believed to be simply a better programming style, OOP will not replace conventional programming, but will be used just for specific programming tasks, for which it is better suited. Traditional COBOL programming will not go away, but will be complemented by new language features for defining classes and objects .

This document describes the new language elements in a very general way. For better understanding, it also gives an overview of the concepts of OOP. Please understand, that this can be in no way a complete presentation of this complex matter. Some knowledge of OOP in general must therefore be assumed. Some of the fundamental concepts of Object Orientation are the following:

• Objects – Data together with methods for these data form objects
• Data encapsulation – Objects ‘hide’ their data
• Classes – Objects of same kind form classes
• Inheritance – Sub-classes ‘inherit’ data and methods of their super-classes
• Polymorphism – Methods with same name in different classes have different effect

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