Customer Reviews

Structured Cobol Programming, Year 2000 Update

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

University-textbook style, with great organization, readable two-color text, comprehensive index, and discussion of COBOL topics (like reference modification) that I have not seen properly addressed in other COBOL books.

Distinction is also made throughout the text between COBOL 74 and COBOL 85, with separate code examples for each.

Well first of all i would like to thank you for publishing such a fantastic book . It is simply great. But the topics which i feel need to be touched upon are : 1. Embedded SQL using COBOL as the host language which will help the user to understand how COBOL can access databases. I am not saying that this should be covered in detail but it should be brushed upon. Embedded SQL is a topic in itself.

I get this book at work like main manual for all our mainframe COBOL programmers. All the mainframe COBOL people in our shop are old-timers with more then 15 years experience. This book for them is like a bible. I'm object-oriented programmer working with G4 languages almost 14 years. This book for me was like 15 years ago. So I bought for my self new-days COBOL books and was able to study this language. I keep this COBOL book on my desk in case I have to communicate with current mainframe programmers. It helps me to understand what they want and explain to them various programming situations.

I have been working as a COBOL programmer since 1993. I learnt COBOL using this book. This book is excellent for beginners as they start off with simple examples and slowly get into the details of programming. It needs to have details about embedded SQLs alongwith various ways of compiling embedded SQLs for different OS and DBs.

I received this book at the beginning of a six-week programming 'bootcamp' a previous employer sent me to several years ago. The text progresses in a very systematic manner in which each lesson reinforced and expanded upon previous lessons. After completing the bootcamp, I spent a few years writing COBOL at various clients and this book is one of a few that served me very well during that time. My only complaint is that its size (800+ pages) and style made it less suited as the quick reference I then needed.

COBOL, indeed it is still very widely used today and it is here to stay for a good while, especially with COBOL 2008 coming up.

If you have no knowledge in COBOL whatsoever, this book will be your starting point.
The thing I like about this book is how they give the many variations of how you can use a certain piece of code, like the many variations of using the EVALUATE statement.

The authors is not boring. He's straight to the point and tells you on many occasions what types of mistakes to avoid because we all know how long COBOL programs can be to debug.

There is always a different example in each chapter and as the author is adding to the example, the full program is given with sample outputs and the code is available from the CD for you to also test.

On top of that, it has colors and gridlines when needed so COBOL code is quite readable.

I bought it for school and continue to use it everyday as a valuable reference tool. highest regards. Get it.

i am an adjunct professor utilizing this as the textbook for an undergraduate cobol class. it has more then sufficient examples, and the self-test is helpful for the students.

Detailed discussion of every topic, good examples and the self-test is really helpful.

I use this book at my University or rather, it is the book used for the course, but we never once use it. Why might you ask? Because unlike all reviews before that said this book was great, this book is written so technically and to understand it, you have to already know something about Cobol. If you need help with a program and want to look it up in the book hoping it will help you, forget it. There is no way this book is of any help and it is so hard to understand. You are better off buying some other book instead of this one. Trust me.