Not a COBOL programmer, but here goes nothing: Comp-5 is a "native" binary format. Equivalent of "comp" type. pic 9(4) comp-5 is a two-byte unsigned binary 0 - 65535. Roughly in 'C, you are looking at: union { unsigned char buffer[2816] ; struct { unsigned short k01[37] ; unsigned short k02[1369]; } a ; } mem_area_one ; The layout of the two-bytes is platform specific ("native"), so if the COBOL is running on a PC platform, the two-bytes are stored in memory reversed (value of 12 decimal is stored as 0x0c00 in byte order).

If your needs are basic, I've successfully used Issue Tracker from the ASP.NET startup kits. Grabbed source (C# or VB.NET) and built the DB. It's a .Net based web solution. Supports multiple projects and assignment of projects by user, etc. Flexibility to tweak code -- code base is relatively small. Basic, but works. http://www.asp.net/downloads/archived/starter-kits/issue-tracker Ri-