Forget what you think you may know about COBOL. Even though the language is more than 50 years old, COBOL applications still reign in the world of enterprise IT. With billions of transactions executed every day and often running behind the scenes, COBOL systems touch many aspects of our daily lives. Your mission: To start a new era of innovation powered by modern tools that bridge COBOL systems to the world of Java and .NET. Brought to you by Micro Focus (www.microfocus.com), the leader in COBOL development tools, this book is written for the COBOL, Java and .NET developer. Key features include: A simplified real-world example to illustrate key concepts; an explanation of the .NET and Java object models for the COBOL developer; an introduction to COBOL for the Java or .NET developer; a complete reference to the new syntax for Visual COBOL; and a free student development tools license integrated within Visual Studio and Eclipse. The author, Paul Kelly, has worked at Micro Focus for over twenty years. He started as a technical author before moving into software development. Paul worked on Visual COBOL for 10 years between 2002 and 2012, initially on Visual Studio development, then later on Eclipse, before changing roles again to work as an architect developing a cloud-based SaaS offering for Micro Focus.