Free e-publication for IT professionals focusing on IT management and integration of enterprise/legacy systems with an emphasis on COBOL. In-depth coverage of the legacy market with articles on: how to manage and modernize legacy systems; choosing a vendor; managing staff; and featured companies and CIO's who are leaders and innovators in their commitment to legacy systems.

Book by Gary DeWard Brown. A timely, pre-millennial update to the classic COBOL resource. This classic reference has been updated to address the current realities of life as a COBOL programmer, focusing on client/server applications and featuring a hands-on tutorial on implementing object-oriented COBOL.

James R. Borck for InfoWorld. The push for businesses to compete at Internet speed has only just begun. Unfortunately for many companies, tapping in to the efficiencies of e-business also means unlocking a wealth of business logic and data trapped in the legacy systems that form the foundation of their corporate infrastructures.

Working COBOL-2 programs from simple logic to three level control break and batch file update/match/merge. Validating data, Table handling, SEARCH, Indexing, VSAM KSDS, variable format files. Includes diskette containing all programs, data files and JCL.

A newsletter for the COBOL development community from Fujitsu Software Corporation. The newsletter covers topical issues such as late-breaking COBOL news, new products, hints and tips, and user success stories.

by David Shelby Kirk at MVS Training site.

COBOL is dead, Long Live COBOL! An international site where technical staff and management can discover and learn about the possibilities of the new COBOL/OO COBOL. Free International discussion forum.

This document provides the X/Open definition of the COBOL Language which is that set of COBOL Language facilities that programmers should follow when using COBOL compilers on conformant systems. The X/Open definition is based on the ISO 1989:1985 Programming Languages - COBOL standard but contains none of the optional modules of standard COBOL.

The one-stop shop for COBOL related news, programming tips, resources and everything COBOL.

James R. Borck for InfoWorld. In the nearly five years I have been writing for InfoWorld, never has an article of mine generated such incredible response.

Descriptions of various COBOL programming books for purchase.

Lauren Gibbons Paul for Datamation. Companies are using a variety of tools and techniques to maintain and modernize their legacy applications.

Lynda Radosevich for InfoWorld. IT professionals can leverage experience in areas such as COBOL programming into a prominent e-commerce position by extracting lessons from mature technologies while embracing young ones.

InfoWorld product comparison. With browsers available on every major platform, the time may be right to make your host-based COBOL applications more widely accessible. Which product best lets you do this with the least amount of effort, cost, and disruption for users?

IBM's Focus On COBOL monthly newsletter. Each month we will present articles, product information, technical information, and other topics of interest for our COBOL customers.

COBOL and related publications are available here in various formats including PDF, BookManager, and various zipped file formats. You can view or download publications directly or you can order publications by phone.

The source for finding complete IBM redbooks and redbooks-in-progress (redpieces) on the World Wide Web. You can view and download the complete contents of books online.

Maggie Biggs for InfoWorld. The growth of Web technologies has created many more options for sites that rely on big iron (and COBOL) as part of their e-business strategy. Those who need to enable Web access to big iron business applications without making major application changes can look to Web-to-host solutions. It is also possible to directly Web-enable big iron.

A book for experienced programmers who want to tackle the challenge of modifying legacy code. Unique in its presentation, Mastering COBOL not only provides an annotated and exemplified language reference, it introduces the reader to the other major components typically found in legacy environments including JCL, CICS, IMS and SQL.

Michael Vizard and Dana Gardner for InfoWorld. Micro Focus will bring its large installed base of COBOL programmers into the age of the Internet this week with the release of Net Express 3.0, an update to its application development environment that facilitates linking COBOL applications to the Web.

An online catalog of Mainframe book titles. Subjects include MVS/JCL, COBOL, DB2, CICS, VSAM, and MVS/TSO.

A resource site for mainframe programmers including manuals and reference guides for COBOL, Assembler, JCL, CICS, TSO, DB2, IMS, IBM Utilities, and ISPF.

Home of CobolReport.com, CobolUniversity.com, Object-Z publishing, cobol standards, object-oriented cobol, articles, reviews, tools, online chat, cobol books, code, links, samples, and programming.

James R. Borck for InfoWorld. LEGACYJ'S PERCOBOL 2.5 is a low-cost tool that's best suited for companies with small and midsize conversion projects. If you're looking to reinvigorate portions of your Cobol resources without imposing a high price tag, PERCobol could be the answer.

Book by Ned Chapin. Covers the new syntax in COBOL-97 and stresses the design that must be done before a COBOL program is written. The text builds on software engineering principles and practices combined with object-oriented technology to enable effective use of this latest form of COBOL.

Book by Young Chae and Steven Rogers. Offers a concise primer on how newer versions of COBOL differ from older ones still in circulation, outlines programming techniques for new features, and highlights advantages, obstacles, and surprises programmers may find along the way.

Learning resources for COBOL and COBOL programming.

Dana Gardner for InfoWorld. Vivek Wadhwa, founder and CEO of Relativity Software, sees gold in the trillions of lines of legacy COBOL code that exist in many older enterprise systems. The gold is not just in the form of profits for his company, but in the ability for companies to reuse that code, and extract an extended return on as many as 20 years of costly investment.

Book by Norman Shakespeare. Addresses the Year 2000 computer dilemma, providing a compact compendium of solutions and reference information useful for addressing the problem. Includes a comprehensive COBOL quick reference, plus reference for date-related functions.