From COBOL to OOP

Driven by the year-2000 problem, the hordes of COBOL developers experienced a renaissance, but the times when COBOL was state-of-the-art are long gone. Object-orientation, application servers, web front-ends, and relational database systems dominate the scene for new projects today. The fact remains however, that millions of lines of source code written in the structured programming language COBOL work daily on computer systems all over the world. One problem that COBOL developers have to deal with on these new projects is familiarity with object-oriented concepts. Markus Knasmüller, rich with experiences of OO projects in COBOL development teams, offers a successful introduction for the experienced COBOL programmer. A careful approach across techniques familiar to COBOL developers and discussions of current standards make this book easily accessible and understandable.

"This is a desperately needed book. Many COBOL programmers have been 'put out to pasture' and excluded from the recent shift in technologies. Unfortunately, the latest generation of OO programmers are just rediscovering some of the problems already tackled by the COBOL generation. Bridging these two generations will benefit not just the programmers, but the state of the industry as well."—Chien Yueh, ASG