Brown has written an excellent book for the experienced software developer. Those who are familiar with other languages and want to dip into Cobol will find that it is an excellent quick and reasonably thorough study of Cobol’s features and capabilities. If you want to learn the language for production use, you will also need access to the standard reference manuals for the system you are targeting. Those who have worked with Cobol in legacy environments and want to expand their horizons into object-oriented development will find this book an excellent introduction and primer. For those of us who have found the terminology of object orientation confusing and less than transparent, this book has the best explanations of basic object-oriented terms that I have seen.

This book is sufficiently easy and enjoyable to read that I am left with the feeling that it must not go into depth, but each topic that I decided to check out in detail is covered well. Existing and proposed ANSI standards are emphasized. This is not the book from which to learn programming. Instead, it is a place for an experienced programmer to learn Cobol, for a Cobol programmer to learn new methods, or for an analyst/designer to learn more about either Cobol or programming methods. Interspersed with the technical information throughout the book are pithy tips such as “simplify,” “don’t nest programs,” and “never compare floating point numbers solely for equality.” Examples support the tips, many of which present useful advice that most of us have had to learn the hard way.

Chapters include “Overview,” “General Language Rules,” “Details of Cobol Statements,” “Structured Programming in Cobol,” “Data Types, Descriptions, and Records,” “Advanced Cobol Topics” (which covers tables, various types of I/O, file structures, and Report Writer), “Cobol Design and Programming for PCs and for Mainframes,” “Program Organizations” (ranging from structured programs to object orientation), “Year 2000 Issues,” “Distributed Computing,” and “Cross-System Development.”

If you want to learn Cobol or to learn more about how to apply Cobol in a cutting-edge manner, this is a very good book. It is well written, easy to read, and filled with examples that illustrate the points being made. The book endeavors to cover Cobol programming issues in both the mainframe and the PC environments. The tips, if you take them to heart, supply commonsense advice derived from years of experience. All in all, this book is well worth the investment of both your money and your time.