COBOL For Dummies?

It's a rare Dummies book that manages to appeal to experienced practitioners as well as novices. COBOL for Dummies pulls it off, explaining the intricacies of COBOL to new programmers as engagingly as it provides hints and shortcuts to seasoned COBOL programmers.

Griffith opens with exactly what beginners need: an overview of the structure of COBOL programs. This elementary information, which should be familiar to more experienced programmers, serves as the basis for deeper coverage in subsequent chapters. One section of the book explains the DATA DIVISION and all the details of how COBOL represents information in memory. Another portion explores the PROCEDURE DIVISION, telling readers how to make COBOL actually do things with data. All the important verbs--and some arcane but useful ones---are highlighted.

This book really shines in its explanation of input and output--two commonplace routines that aren't easy to do efficiently with COBOL. Griffith, an experienced COBOL contractor, has come up with good input, output, and sorting solutions that you can paste into your own programs.

The CD-ROM accompanying this book contains, among many other things, Fujitsu COBOL development tools, which were selling for $2,500 just a few months ago. Even without the text, this book represents a savings of 98.8 percent on the excellent Fujitsu software--a blue-light special of legendary proportions. If you're doing any work with COBOL, you need this book.