COBOL still thrives - COBOL Logic and Programming by Fritz McCameron. Published by Richard D Irwin Inc. 451~~. &22.95. Despite rumours and predictions re- garding its expected demise over the past few years, COBOL continues to thrive and the declared intention of this book is to create a ‘COBOL-related computer awareness which can be integrated with other subjects in for- ming a comprehensive body of busi- ness administration knowledge.’

1 can’t help but feel that the wealth of material contained in its pages covers the subject to a much greater extent than is implied in this statement.

Since some of the sections seem quite brief compared with most of the book I found myself wondering if perhaps Mr McCameron had felt that the subject matter was becoming over- whelming and had tried to abbreviate it at times. There is’ no denying that the subject is dealt with comprehen- sively, with numerous diagrams and illustrations. Unfortunately, the lay- out too often leads to figures and

diagrams being separated by several pages from their references, necessita- ting much turning back and forth, which I found irritating after a while.

Another factor which also became very annoying was the number of minor spelling and grammatical errors encountered throughout the book. One confusing example occurs right at the beginning. Referring to the practice of differentiating between 0

and 0 on coding sheets, the text reads ‘When handwritten, the letter 0 is written with a slash through it, as shown, to dis~guish it from the

numeral ‘zero’ ‘: but, as can be seen, the numeral ‘0’ is printed instead of

the letter ‘0’. This alone is confusing, but it is - to my mind - further confounded by the fact that the method quoted is an IBM convention, whereas many other versions of COBOL put a slash through the zero.

In his introduction McCameron does state that the text conforms to 1974 ANS COBOL as implemented by IBM, but it would be useful to draw atten-

tion to significant variations - par- ticularly ones such as this which are in fact the complete opposite. Other

errors include the following: ‘ . . f cannot infer meaning to vague

instructions . . . ’ ‘ . . . without losing its identify.’

On page 159 two halves of a pro-

gram listing have been reversed. All these errors are in themselves very

minor and inconsequential, but the fact that they have not been picked up and corrected at the proof reading stage suggests a somewhat lackadai- sical attitude which is not really acceptable in a textbook. Whilst

admitting that this should not detract

from the content of the book, I must confess that I found myself reading the text with a view to spotting simple errors rather than assimilating any

knowledge. This affliction would probably not affect other readers.

DAVID ALBURY

4GLs in- perspective __lll_.-----

Fourth generation languages: Volume 1 - Principles by James Martin. Pub- lished by Prentice-fall. 42Opp. $42.75. This book aims to set the principles of fourth-generation languages into per- spective. It is aimed both at DP managers and professionals, though it does not actually say so. Much of it has been seen before either in Applica- tion Development without Programmers

or Fourth Generation Languages which

have been available as Savant reports. It is therefore interesting to see what has changed in this latest book. There are new sections covering action dia- grams, structuring, natural language, graphics, decision support and proto- typing. The rest is an update of the previous works. I find it readable

though I do get tired of the simplistic examples particularly when they are in languages which I am never likely to use.

It is a pity that with such an expensive book, which looks nice and has good quality illustrations, the proof reading was not more careful. You would expect a book that adver- tised itself as Volume 1 to refer somewhere to what is in Volume 2. Within chapter 1 there is a reference to an Appendix A which I cannot find and to Box 7.1 which should be 9.1. Both these errors originate from the Savant version.

My real worry is that the book is not always sure whether it is covering principles or details; this means that

some of the examples are rather sim- plistic - there are so many examples from different 4GLs that one can get confused. I would therefore recom- mend that it should be read first with

a high-level skim and that the detailed examples should only be studied where they appear to be particularly relevant. I am however sure that many people could benefit from the ideas found here; I would see it as a good investment for a data processing department rather than an individual purchase, at this price.

RICHARD WATTS The National Computing Centre

~0128 no 1 january/february 1986