Microsoft .NET for COBOL Programmers [Paperback]

Howard E Hinman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2002

Microsoft .NET for COBOL Programmers offers more than 23 hours of video presentations on using COBOL in the Microsoft .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET. This course uses Fujitsu's NetCOBOL for .NET product and focuses on a wide range of .NET related topics and technologies.

This book contains an excellent primer on Object COBOL.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This manual and accompanying video-based instruction are for people who will be using NetCOBOL for .NET. This course is designed as supplemental instruction. It assumes that you possess basic knowledge of COBOL and are familiar with Microsoft Windows Platforms. Some familiarity with Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft visual development languages is helpful.

You are the most important commentator and critic of our training course. We value your opinion and criticism. We want to know what we are doing right, and most importantly, what we can do better. Send your questions or comments to [e-mail].

From the Author

Microsoft's .NET Environment represents the single most substantial impact upon COBOL since the advent of IBM's ISPF in the 1970's. Not only does it provide an ultra-modern development environment in Visual Studio .NET, which COBOL now plugs into, but it provides in excess of 5,000 callable classes and API's that COBOL developers have direct, unfiltered, non-wrappered access to. COBOL is now on a level playing field with C++, C# and Visual Basic, as COBOL developers use the identical screen painters and development environment for developing GUI Windows applications as well as ASPX Web Form applications, and may even develop Web Services in COBOL. Legacy programs can be brought into this exciting new environment, allowing COBOL to fully participate on the PC, on the Network and on the Web. This book includes approximately 23 hours of video based training on 2 CD's. It is not fluff - it is real programming, using these new technologies and includes numerous sample COBOL programs to help get programmers started. But more importantly, is explains the concepts from the ground up, so that COBOL programmers who are unfamiliar with this new environment may learn how to use it quickly and efficiently. I truly hope that COBOL programmers everywhere will find this extremely useful in programming for the future.
-Howard E. Hinman

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Product Details

• Paperback: 62 pages
• Publisher: Fujitsu Software Corporation (October 30, 2002)
• ISBN-10: 0972157301
• ISBN-13: 978-0972157308
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,969,883 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 23 Hours of Video Tutorials, December 12, 2002

By 

Richard Hogarth (Wilmington, ILLINOIS USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft .NET for COBOL Programmers (Paperback)

COBOL is still the dominant mainframe production language and new applications continue to be created using it. It was therefore with a great deal of anticipation that I started Howard Hinman's rewarding series of tutorials for COBOL using Microsoft's Visual Studio.NET development environment. Fujitsu offers a trial version of .netCOBOL for download from their Web site ... and Microsoft also offers a download of the trial version of VisualStudio.NET. Prior to starting this excellent set of tutorials, I installed both the trial versions of netCOBOL and Visual Studio.NET. Although neither are necessary for you to view and benefit from the netCOBOL videos, being able to recreate Howard's examples on your machine will significantly increase your understanding of netCOBOL when you can see that the examples that he presents really do work. Too many times I have attempted to create and run application examples from "How To" texts only to have them inexplicably fail. Howard's narratives follow his step-by-step examples completely and accurately. If you have programmed in COBOL before but have not yet used either Visual Studio.NET or the .NET framework, you will be pleased to see that no previous knowledge of either is required or assumed. I found nothing to complain about while completing the nine lessons and the entire experience was pleasurable and rewarding. My operating system is Windows XP Professsional, which I installed only because the use of IIS, which neither Windows 98 or XP Home Edition includes, is recommended. The tutorials run on Windows Media Player and the video and audio presentations are excellent.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Training Video on Target, November 29, 2002

By 

James E Graves (Celebration, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft .NET for COBOL Programmers (Paperback)

This training video is superb.

The level of detail is almost always on target. Each new section begins with a broader perspective and then narrows down to repeatable lessons that bring home the concepts. Howard almost always starts with a blank project so every detail is covered; there are no mysteries left over.

I think this is the most effective video training I have ever seen.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Congratulations, December 2, 2002

By 

"nenamarko" (Vancouver, BC Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft .NET for COBOL Programmers (Paperback)

With this email I would like to express my opinion about your two NetCOBOL CD's called Microsoft .NET for COBOL Programmers.

First, a brief description about my professional background:

I have 15 years of COBOL programming experience on different mainframe platforms.
I have been working with Fujitsu Consulting for 5+ years.
I have taken numerous courses in VB, Java, UML, Web Development using VB, and lately several .NET events, presentations or conferences.

My next project is not going to use mainframe but Microsoft .NET, particularly ASP .NET and VB.NET.

Now about your CD's:

These were the best educational CD's I have ever taken.

Because of my knowledge of Microsoft .NET and VB, and my long experience with COBOL, your CD's were easy to follow. I noticed that NetCOBOL has a lot of similarities with VB, which made it easier to understand OO NetCOBOL.. It helped me very much to understand .NET and VB features which were not quite clear to me until now.

Your CD's are very much like a live classroom setting, and even better because you can repeat parts if you want to see or hear again. Windows Media Audio/Video Player was probably the best technology to use for these lessons. It made them dynamic and not boring. Other educational CD's, like Computer Based Training CD's, are without voice and motion and thus were too static and boring. Your CD's are very detailed and thoroughly done, showing each detail, each step, and each cursor movement.

I especially liked the fact that Howard was creating most of the projects from scratch. On other CD's projects or programs are already created and you don't see start to finish how to do it. They usually just show some parts or creating small parts from already created entity.

I also enjoyed trying to create same projects on my own in my Visual Studio .NET environment. I had small challenging problems, because of some differences between my installed production version of NetCOBOL and the one that Howard was using. But I was able to resolve them quickly and it just added value to my learning process.

I am very excited about the possibility to work in the near future on some projects using NetCOBOL.
But I am also a little cautious and ready to expect more challenges when using it in the real world. The real world COBOL programs and mainframe environments can be much more complicated than the examples presented.

Again, congratulations for excellent CD's.