Chapter 25 Further Reading

Standards and Specifications

  • ISO/IEC 1989:2002 — The COBOL 2002 standard that introduced OO extensions. Available from ISO; the definitive reference for OO COBOL syntax.
  • ISO/IEC 1989:2014 — The COBOL 2014 standard with refinements to OO features.

Compiler Documentation

  • Micro Focus Visual COBOL Documentation — The most complete OO COBOL implementation. Micro Focus's documentation includes tutorials and examples for CLASS-ID, inheritance, and interfaces.
  • IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS Language Reference — Documents which OO features are supported in IBM's compiler. Essential reading for z/OS shops.
  • GnuCOBOL FAQ and Programmer's Guide — Documents the (limited) OO support in the free compiler.

Books

  • Arranga, E.C., Coyle, F.P., "Object-Oriented COBOL" (1996) — One of the earliest books on OO COBOL. Dated but historically important for understanding the design philosophy.
  • Stern, N., Stern, R., Ley, J., "COBOL for the 21st Century" (11th edition) — A comprehensive COBOL textbook that includes coverage of OO extensions.
  • Gamma, E., et al., "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" (1994) — The classic "Gang of Four" patterns book. While written for C++ and Smalltalk, the patterns apply to any OO language, including OO COBOL.

Articles and Papers

  • "Object-Oriented COBOL: A Practical Approach" — Various Micro Focus white papers on adopting OO COBOL in enterprise environments.
  • "Modernizing COBOL Applications: From Procedural to Object-Oriented" — Industry articles on migration strategies.

Online Resources

  • IBM Z Xplore (https://www.ibm.com/z/resources/zxplore) — Free cloud access to a z/OS environment for experimenting with COBOL programming, including some OO features.
  • GnuCOBOL Community — Forums and mailing lists for the open-source COBOL compiler.
  • Micro Focus Community Forums — Discussion boards for Micro Focus COBOL users, including OO COBOL topics.
  • Chapter 26: Inter-Language Communication — An alternative modernization approach where COBOL collaborates with Java and C rather than adopting OO internally.
  • Chapter 37: Modernization Strategies — The broader context for deciding between OO COBOL, language migration, and other modernization paths.
  • Chapter 22: Structured Programming Revisited — How good procedural structure provides many of the same benefits as OO without the syntax change.