Uses for COBOL other than Mainframe?

I've got that Sam's Teach Yourself Cobol in 21 Days book sitting on my
end-stand next to my bed, as if it were the bible. I've been wanting to
devour that book for the last few years. When I first bought it, I got
through the first few hundred pages, and I was enjoying it. It's just good,
straightforward coding. But eventually I quit reading it, thinking it was a
waste of time. I need a good project to motivate me, something that actually
might have a use. Also it would be nice if other people could access my
programs, then I could build up some decent size tables. Any ideas? Maybe
some web-development could be done in COBOL.

Matt

> Maybe some web-development could be done in COBOL.

It should be quite easy to develop a web-based system in Cobol, I have
done several, but if you are doing it as a CGI then you need to know
that this is stateless. It is necessary to have a program that can
identify who sent the message and what they were doing before.  This is
usually done with cookies or hidden fields.

> I need a good project to motivate me

Yes, I often need that, but when one comes along and is needed
'tomorrow' then I wish that I had read those tutorials and find that I
need to do the whole thing in '21 Minutes'  prior to writing live
programs.

"Matt" <mcollins_fl@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:rC4qe.117877$IO.108154@tornado.tampabay.rr.com...
> I've got that Sam's Teach Yourself Cobol in 21 Days book sitting on my
> end-stand next to my bed, as if it were the bible. I've been wanting to
> devour that book for the last few years. When I first bought it, I got
> through the first few hundred pages, and I was enjoying it. It's just
good,
> straightforward coding. But eventually I quit reading it, thinking it was
a
> waste of time. I need a good project to motivate me, something that
actually
> might have a use. Also it would be nice if other people could access my
> programs, then I could build up some decent size tables. Any ideas? Maybe
> some web-development could be done in COBOL.
>
> Matt
>
I endorse what Richard said. I have used COBOL for CGI code in one major web
based reservation system and found it excellent. Fujitsu NetCOBOL 5 and up
provide tools for Web development, but one of them I could never get to work
properly, so I wrote my own replacement for it. (I'll gladly make it
available for free, if you go this route.)

The only real problem is getting an ISP to let you install COBOL on his
server. If you are running your own Web Server, no problem.

Nowadays, I don't use COBOL for CGI (mainly because of the ISP problem noted
above), but I DO use components I have written in it, for web based
applications (on my IIS server) as well as Windows.

Coding in COBOL is definitely fun.

Pete.

There is a great life for COBOL outside of mainframes. I have been
writing COBOL for 40 years, but the last COBOL I wrote for a mainframe
was nearly 20 years ago. There is a lot of legacy logic out there which
can be adapted to desk-tops and web apps.  We use Fujitsu
(www.netcobol.com) along with Norcom's GUI ScreenIO (www.screenio.com).
We can do almost everything with the GUI that we could do with VB and
it is quite easy to match it up so the business logic is coming from an
old (but stable) COBOL program. Additionally with the ScreenIO
'client/server' option, it is fairly easy to make the app either
Internet or Intranet capable.The Norcom people take support seriously
and we have never been let down. I urge you to finish that book. Many
languages have come and gone while COBOL just keeps working. There will
be a need for good COBOL programmers for sometime.