Cobol still lives, at least in IBM’s version of ANSI standard Cobol 85 for IBM’s AS/400. This book is for Cobol applications programmers who have used Cobol on other computers and want to learn to program Cobol applications on the AS/400. This is a formidable task. For example, it takes the author until page 39 to show the reader how to print the familiar message “Hello World.” It took Kernighan and Ritchie seven pages to do this in The C programming language [1]. The author is not overly verbose, but he had to cover a plethora of details before “Hello World.” In chapter 0, the basic procedures needed to start using the AS/400 are described: establishing a library, creating an output queue, changing your profile, and printing a spooled file. These details are given early on to encourage the reader to enter and execute “Hello World” as well as the rest of the examples in the text.

Chapter 1 introduces AS/400 object orientation, Cobol/ 400, and more specific AS/400 features. By chapter 2, we are ready to print “Hello World.” To do this, the author has provided salient parts of the Programming Development Manager User’s Guide, Source Entry Utility User’s Guide, Screen Design Aide User’s Guide and Reference, Report Layout Utility User’s Guide, and Data File Utility User’s Guide. This characterizes the book’s approach--give enough salient information from the myriad of IBM documents along with detailed examples that show how to use various Cobol features to facilitate the execution of these examples. The book culminates with the development of a detailed application. The author ambitiously attempts to show experienced Cobol programmers not just the language and enhancements, but how to make their programs clearer, more concise, modular, and flexible.

I have a few small complaints. The code examples are printed in lighter type than the rest of the text, which sometimes makes them hard to read. I do not see the pedagogical value of chapter 15, “COBOL Date Routines.” The appendices “COBOL/400 Compiler Limits,” “COBOL/400 Syntax Reference,” “EBCDIC and ASCII Collating Sequences,” and “COBOL/400 Reserved Words and Symbols Used in the PICTURE Clause” are readily available in AS/400 documents and do not need to be repeated here. These complaints notwithstanding, an experienced Cobol programmer can follow this book from beginning to end without a teacher, and will then be able to effectively use Cobol on the AS/400.