Where can you declare a cursor in a COBOL-DB2 program?

A cursor can be declared either in Working Storage Section or in Procedure Division also.

In a COBOL-DB2 program, you can declare a cursor in the Procedure Division, specifically within the Working-Storage Section or the Local-Storage Section. Cursors are typically declared in the Data Division, and they are used to retrieve and process rows from result sets returned by SQL queries.

Here’s a simple example:

IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. SampleProgram.
DATA DIVISION.
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01 WS-CURSOR-NAME CURSOR.

PROCEDURE DIVISION.
EXEC SQL
DECLARE WS-CURSOR-NAME CURSOR FOR
SELECT COLUMN1, COLUMN2
FROM YOUR_TABLE
WHERE YOUR_CONDITION;

PERFORM OPEN-CURSOR.
PERFORM FETCH-CURSOR UNTIL SQLCODE NOT = 0.
PERFORM CLOSE-CURSOR.

STOP RUN.

OPEN-CURSOR.
EXEC SQL
OPEN WS-CURSOR-NAME
END-EXEC.

FETCH-CURSOR.
EXEC SQL
FETCH WS-CURSOR-NAME INTO :HOST-VARIABLE1, :HOST-VARIABLE2
END-EXEC.

PERFORM PROCESS-ROW.

PROCESS-ROW.
* Process the retrieved row here.

CLOSE-CURSOR.
EXEC SQL
CLOSE WS-CURSOR-NAME
END-EXEC.

In this example, WS-CURSOR-NAME is declared in the Working-Storage Section as a cursor, and it is then used in the SQL statements to declare, open, fetch, and close the cursor. The actual processing of the retrieved rows is done in the PROCESS-ROW section.

Please note that the exact structure of the program may vary based on your specific requirements and coding standards.