Book excerpt: The classic guide to programming in COBOL-updated, expanded, and even more user-friendly than before Advanced Cobol, Third Edition For many years, Gary Brown's classic guide to advanced COBOL has been the on-the-job reference of choice for experienced COBOL programmers internationally. Without compromising on any of the outstanding features that made it so successful, this Third Edition has been updated and expanded to reflect all the important new trends and applications in COBOL programming. Packed with dozens of concise examples illustrating language features, and featuring several complete programs, this indispensable working resource arms you with practical coverage of: * All essential COBOL terms, concepts, and statements * COBOL programming solutions to the Y2K problem * Full Screen terminal support, subprograms and functions, and COBOL Report Writer * Items in proposed new ANSI Standard * Object-oriented COBOL * Obsolete statements and how to work around them * COBOL for client/server and distributed computing * Cross-system development * Application programming interfaces Wiley Computer Publishing. Timely. Practical. Reliable. Visit our Web site at www.wiley.com/compbooks/