COBOL is one of the traditional mainframe languages. Powerful PC compilers have become available which have widened the audience and applicability of the language. This text addresses the changing needs of COBOL programmers to understand, use, and maintain the vast amount of COBOL code in existence. It provides complete coverage of COBOL with an emphasis on COBOL 85. It also covers object-oriented programming which has recently been applied to the language. Included are special icons to reference the features of the COBOL standard and topics of significant interest to PC users. The update includes a revised disk and a chapter on the Year 2000 Problem. This chapter provides a full account of this problem, how it arose, and its relevance to the COBOL programming language. It also discusses what must be done to fix the problem and other issues that could have a profound impact on information processing in the 21st century.