Cobol: From Micro to Mainframe/Book&Disk

Rating:
Summary: excellent for the beginning/intermediate Cobol programmer
Review: Excellent resource for the novice or intermediate Cobol programmer. Very clear explanations and abundant examples aid understanding. The authors favor a "hands on" approach which encourages the reader to try out the concepts in each chapter.The authors are careful about pointing out differences between Cobol-85 and Cobol-74 as they arise. While this may seem to be a minor point so soon before the release of Cobol-9x, it is helpful to those who work with older systems that are not fully Cobol-85 compliant.The included disks contain the input files for the programming exercises (a time-saver for students) and a Cobol compiler and editor for DOS. The compiler is not a serious competitor to any commercial compiler, but it is sufficient for a student or someone just starting out in Cobol.This book/disk set is the best resource I've seen for Cobol at this level. I strongly recommend it