Hello everybody!

We are new Lawson users and I am a programmer (RPG) without Cobol training.
As I understand it Lawson uses an older version of Cobol.
I would like some recommendations of where I can find some Cobol reference manuals that relate to the version of Cobol that lawson uses.
I have written some programs and modified others mainly by using Google to search for examples of code and then making them work in my program.
Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks.

did you check out the documentatuon at www.microfocus.com

Couple of things,

1) Have you signed up for any classes with Lawson? I would recommend Case Tools and Workbench classes
2) Go to $LAWDIR/<productline>/??src directories and open up the PD files and take a look. I've always thought it looked like plain English.
3) If you can get the course material for the above classes (#1) that might help you
4) Lawson's code isn't all that much "COBOL", its a bunch of APIs which were written and a when the code is complied they are interpreted into COBOL and then compiled. You can't really do much with the interpreted code since its a million lines long and has a bunch of non-sense it in. You'll need to learn the APIs, which you can learn from the API pdf available on the support site.
5) The only other things you need to know are how to edit (led and lx, I also use a different editor for which we've built a Lawson plugin.), compile, use libraries, lookup table defs, and the few files that form a program. Sounds like a lot but its more like 1 afternoon for a coder with experience.
6) Get help here or on Topic (lists.topica.com) everyone is willing to help. :console:

Good luck
Tan

If you are already a programmer and working in RPG then you might be a bit bored with the level of the intro level of the Lawson CASE classes.

The CORE of the Logic of the code conforms to the COBOL 85 (Microfocus,) standards (including the workfile error status codes,) minus a few key features (CASE command not supported!) The exception to this includes the SCREEN file and the REPORT filelayouts. These are quite straightforward.

I would recommend reviewing this code and posting questions here and then perhaps taking the second level or advanced CASE class!

Thanks for the replies.

I now have www.microfocus.com bookmarked. So that I can refer to it when I have specific how to/syntax Cobol questions.

I have taken some of the CASE and Wokbench classes which were helpful but didn't really get into the Cobol code that much.

I appreciate the offer of help with specific Cobol questions and will be sure to ask next time I'm stumped!

Thanks Again.