A new exciting field of computer science, known as symbolic computation, has emerged over the past ten years. Symbolic computations ( SC) are fundamentally different from numerical computations that we normally perform on computers, they involve manipulation of symbols rather than or along with arithmetic operations on numbers. For example if we wanted to find the integral of 1 x , a symbolic system would return ln( x) - the same result as we would expect to find in a handbook of mathematical functions. Software currently available for SC can perform algebraic operations, manipulate functions, do calculus, and perform matrix operations. Some of the systems can also produce Fortran code. Such symbolic operations can be carried out on both mainframe and personal computers in a fraction of the time that an engineer or a mathematician may require to do the same job by hand. This paper reviews the relevant literature and summarizes our own experience with the application of this new technology to petroleum engineering problems. We illustrate the power of SC by applying one such system - Macsyma - to the evaluation of thermodynamic relations from an equation-of-state. While symbolic systems offer great opportunities, there are also certain limitations of the current technology. Difficulties were encountered in the evaluation of certain integrals and in the simplification of complicated expressions. These problems are discussed in the paper and some comments are made on the future of this technology, particularly in the field of reservoir simulation.