Acknowledgments

First and Foremost, I would like to express my gratitude and thanks to my family for their patience, support, and encouragement. Throughout this 1-year+ journey, my loving wife, Lilia, my handsome son, Everette, and my charming daughter , Krystalynn, provided a sense of purpose that helped me focus and stay reminded of the importance of achieving my goals.

Next, I really owe an enormous thank you to my other family, the entire Apress team. To those at Apress working behind the scenes, thank you. To those at Apress that I've communicated with at one time or another (namely, Dan Appleman, Gary Cornell, Simon Hayes, Grace Wong, Valerie Perry, Sofia Marchant, Kari Brooks, and Nicole LeClerc), thank you! Working with each of you has been an extreme pleasure . Truly, I can't thank you all enough. My entire belief and understanding of teamwork, and the value of editing and project management has been reinforced and refreshed. You all are awesome !

To my technical reviewer, Hung Tran, thank you! Your comments and suggestions have certainly helped improve the accuracy of this book's technical content. Beyond that, the fact that you were there responding to my queries via instant messenger during those predawn hours was helpful in many ways.

To Dr. Basim Kadhim, Suad Lovic, and Doug Brown, all of Fujitsu Software, this entire effort would not have been possible without your assistance. Thank you for promptly answering and addressing each of my questions and comments as I installed and used your NetCOBOL for .NET product.

To Jerome Benjamin Garfunkel, thank you for agreeing to write the foreword for this book. It is truly my honor to have someone with your wealth of relevant experience and insight generously contribute to the success of this book. Again, thank you!

Finally, thank you to the community of COBOL mainframe developers for supporting a book such as this one. I was taught that it is a noble gesture to give back to the community, to remember where you came from, to honor your roots. Well, through this book, I can only hope that I have served you well.