Folio Society
Best Sellers List Report
Time to complete Allow 4-6 hours continuous.
Program Download BestSellers.Cbl is a model answer. Don't look at this until you have made your own attempt at the program.
Example Output

BSList.Rpt is the report.
Example Input

BookSales.Dat is the sequential Book Sales File

BookMF.Dat is the sequential Book Master File
Exam Practice

If you want to try out the exam under the same conditions as our students you can write the program in a printed version of FBSOutline.Doc. This is an MS-Word file containing the program outline, the data files and the report produced by running the program.

Don't forget to have the COBOL Metalanguage elements available for reference.

The time allotted for the exam was 2.5 hours.
Major Constructs Sequential Files, Print Files, SORT with Input Procedure and Output Procedure, Tables

Introduction

The Folio Society is a Book  Club that sells fine books to customers all over the world.  Each time a book is sold the Book-Number, the Number-of-Copies and a one character field indicating the Sale-Status (Normal Sale, Free Gift, Reduced Price (N,F,R)) is written to a Book-Sales-File. 

A program is required to print a list of the ten best selling books (by copies sold) in the Book Club from the Book-Sales-File.  Only Normal Sale books should be considered.

Files

Book Master File

The Book Master File is a sequential file sequenced on ascending Book-Number.  The records have the following description;

Field

Type

Length

Value

Book-Number

9

5

00001-99999

Book-Title

X

25

-

Author-Name

X

25

-

 

Book Sales File

The Book Sales File is not in any particular sequence but we are guaranteed that a Book-Number that occurs in the file will have a corresponding entry in the Book Master File.

Field

Type

Length

Value

Book-Number

9

5

00001-99999

Number-Of-Copies

9

2

1-99

Sale-Status

X

1

N,F,R

 

Processing

Sort the Book Sales file throwing away unwanted records (F,R).  Accumulate the sales for a book.  If the book is in the top ten get the Book-Title and Author-Name from the Book Master File.  When the Sorted Book Sales File has been processed, print out the top ten best sellers.

 

Print Specification

          See print specification and example report.
          The Sales field should be zero suppressed and have commas inserted as appropriate.

 

 


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Copyright Notice

This COBOL project specification is the copyright property of Michael Coughlan. You have permission to use this material for your own personal use but you may not reproduce it in any published work without written permission from the author.