Synopsis
This is aimed at students taking BTEC National Diploma/Certificate in Computer Studies and those on business computing type degrees and also students taking City & Guilds 7261 COBOL I/COBOL II and those on college short courses or taking the Diploma of the Institute of Data Processing Management. The book presents the fundamentals of business programming, including program design and testing, using COBOL 85 as the vehicle. It develops the necessary design using structure diagrams first and then codes the COBOL form it, in all examples throughout. It is suitable for the beginner, and avoids two major pitfalls, it does not start with trivial material and it does not start suitably and then accelerate away leaving the beginner gasping. It progresses smoothly and steadily, and at no point is the reader ever left with an explanation which depends on something that has not been covered earlier. All exercises can be worked successfully if the reader has studied the text because every detail needed has been covered. COBOL is a very extensive language and most commercial programmers use, perhaps, only a fifth of the facilities. The book concentrates on that core.
As a result the student learns the essentials and is not confused by the less important, less used parts of the language.
