Welcome back! Now that you’ve written your first COBOL program and become familiar with its basic structure, it’s time to explore further. In this lesson, we'll dive into the Data Division and learn about defining simple variables in COBOL. Plus, we'll expand on using the DISPLAY statement to output more complex information.

In this lesson, we will focus on these key aspects:

1. Data Division: Understanding how to define and use variables in COBOL.
2. Simple Variables: Learning to create and manipulate alphabetic variables.
3. More on Display: Using the DISPLAY statement to show variable values on the screen.

Here’s a glimpse of what your code will look like:

The Data Division is a critical part of a COBOL program where you define all the variables and data structures that your program will use. It provides a way to specify different types of data that will be used in the program, and it's divided into several sections, with the Working-Storage Section being the most commonly used.