Introductory Cobol housed within a consistent methodology of structure charts, flowcharts, and pseudocode may be old wine in a new bottle. The language predates the popularity of one or more of these approaches, and the use of a multiplicity of supporting information may be somewhat modern. The methodologies themselves are not the newest, however, nor is there any discussion of automated support for these tools. Though it may be too much to expect given the intended readership, I would have liked to see a few remarks on newer departures, such as selections from Object Cobol; the applicability of object-directed methodologies, even for structured approaches; GUI-based environments; Internet linkages; and the interfacing of Cobol programs to databases, spreadsheets, and word processors. The few elementary comments included on AS/400 support do not fill the bill.

The book does have its strengths, which are apparent in its “Completed Examples.” Averaging slightly more than one per chapter over 11 chapters, these tie together the methodology and code. They evolve incrementally, from “read a file and write it out,” ultimately with headings and pagination; through arithmetic, comparisons, and sectioned printouts; to indexed sequential file creation and an example with add, change, and delete operations. The code (about 2000 lines) is provided on an accompanying diskette. Finally, each chapter has objectives, a summary, review questions, and assignments; no answers are given.

Unfortunately, the book suffers from a number of problems that might be overcome in a classroom or lab setting but that hinder independent study. Better editing might have helped with missing words, mismatches between chapter objectives and contents, and the repetition of assignments in two consecutive chapters. At a higher level of editing, questionable comments on random access files, which are not otherwise covered, might also have been avoided. Likewise, poor text and code coordination often sends readers scurrying about in the attempt to corroborate or connect. The diskette’s many lines of code contrast with the complete lack of sample file data for the code to work on. About 50 lines of file description add nothing to the book. Appendix D, more than 60 pages of Cobol statement formats, is overkill relative to the text’s coverage, though it might be there to serve as source material for a second course mentioned by the author.