Sayles and Molchan provide an in-depth survey and detailed tutorial about tools for developing COBOL applications for IBM mainframe environments. This book is for serious programmers only. It will only be of interest to and comprehensible to those who are familiar with IBM mainframe teleprocessing and database management systems.

COBOL was invented in the late 1950s--the Jurassic Era of computing. Like Mark Twain, who said “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” COBOL has survived and prospered while its supposed successors have come and for the most part gone. If graphical development tools do not displace it soon, as seems unlikely, COBOL will likely be around well into the 21st century. One way in which COBOL has been revitalized is through the personal computer implementations of compilers, testing systems, and runtime environments described in this book.

While the text has a clear and breezy style, it gets very technical very fast. Much of the book concerns tools from Micro Focus, Inc., but the text also covers the “third-party add-ons and accessories” of the subtitle. A sampling of topics includes developing DB2 applications using the XDB package; developing IMS applications using Micro Focus IMS Option 2.5 (including PSBs, DBDs, and MFS); and developing CICS applications using Micro Focus CICS, COBOL program analysis tools, and PC tools for program editing and testing. Detailed examples appear throughout. The book offers more: client/server development and object-oriented COBOL (yes, you read right). Be sure to read the “OO Gestalt” paragraph if you buy the book. The 77 pages of appendices are even more technical than the text.