The authors intended to accomplish many things with this book. The first chapter is supposed to quickly introduce students to COBOL programming. Second, they intend to provide enough material for a one-year COBOL sequence for information systems students. Third, the book is supposed to help COBOL-74 programmers make the transition to COBOL-85. Fourth, the authors provide a data disk so the students can test the COBOL programs provided in the book without having to retype the code. Fifth, it is supposed to let the students develop and test COBOL programs on their PCs using the CA-Realia Classroom COBOL compiler, which is provided with the book. This compiler imposes a 500-line limit on the code, and complies with the ANSI COBOL standard. Students can also use several tools that come with the book: a debugger, an editor, a linker, and an indexed file utility.

The only disadvantage I noticed is the lack of any mention of the proposed standard for object-oriented COBOL (X3J4.1). While such a standard may not affect the software production world for another couple of years, universities that are expected to be the agents of technology transfer should begin teaching their first- and second-year classes object-oriented programming; they may also want to expose the students to the probable changes in the COBOL standard.

I have taught COBOL to undergraduates in the past, and wished that such a book and associated PC-based software tools were available to my students. A strength of this book is in chapter 3, where the authors introduce program development methodology, using the tuition billing program as a case study, and talk about the test data. This early introduction of program development methodology and some tools for it is useful. Chapters 4 through 8 provide a good discussion of the four divisions of COBOL programs, debugging, editing and coding standards, and data validation, using the tuition billing case study introduced earlier. In these chapters, the section on limitations of COBOL-74 is especially useful for the COBOL-74 programmers who are using this book to make the transition to COBOL-85.

Chapter 9 returns to procedure division for more in-depth analysis of useful clauses such as perform, read, write from, initialize, and accept; it also examines string processing with inspect, string, unstring, and so on. A new case study, namely a car billing problem, demonstrates the use of the new material introduced in this chapter.

Chapter 10 is devoted to screen I/O, and uses both the case studies introduced earlier. Chapters 11, 12, and 13 handle an important topic--tables. All three chapters contain special sections listing the limitations of COBOL-74.

It is good to see chapter 14 devoted to sorting and related issues, rather than seeing sorting included as just part of another chapter. Sorting is one of the most frequent operations in data processing. The authors develop two programs to illustrate variations in the SORT statement and conclude with a brief discussion of merging as a special case of sorting.

Chapter 15 uses the COBOL already introduced to introduce control breaks, stressing the close relationship between control breaks and sorting. Chapter 16 introduces subprograms. This chapter prepares the students to fully utilize a divide-and-conquer approach. Sequential and indexed file organization, creation, and maintenance are discussed in chapters 17 and 18.

About 200 pages of appendices are devoted to the CA-Realia Classroom COBOL compiler, utilities, and the data disk provided with the book; hands-on exercises; reserved words; a COBOL-85 reference summary; answers to odd-numbered exercises; and projects. The index is good.