Cobol - Re: "in search of" International (not the usual coutnries) OO COBOL users -

Author

Re: "in search of" International (not the usual coutnries) OO COBOL users -

Rene_Surop

2007-04-16, 3:55 am

I for one... from Philippines. 3rd World country eh, and using
Microfocus OOCobol (NetX ver3.1/.NET). All of my applications are made
out of it. But, any reason why you're taking a list out of it?

William M. Klein

2007-04-16, 7:55 am

The reason that I asked to handle this off-list is that it relates to the ISO
Standards processing of an ongoing "ballot". What I would like to say will
differ depending on which country people are in. The Philippines wasn't in my
original note because they do not participate in the ISO COBOL balloting.
(Apparently, they aren't a member of ISO/IEC JTC 1).

As far as your comment about Micro Focus (and that of Jimmy as well), Micro
Focus is doing its "own thing" (which I happen to agree with) and I don't think
I need to post in their forum. I am not certain how much (or how little) they
are involving their customers/users, but I'll leave that to them.

As far as DD's note (humorous - I hope)
The rate is $0 per year
The location is wherever your computer is
As I indicated in my original note, I will NOT use or distribute your email ID
(if you respond), but you have to take my word for this (as well as the fact
previously posted in this group, that I am not employed so wouldn't use such a
list to make money any way.)

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
"Rene_Surop" <infodynamics_ph@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1176705712.230474.190460@b75g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
>I for one... from Philippines. 3rd World country eh, and using
> Microfocus OOCobol (NetX ver3.1/.NET). All of my applications are made
> out of it. But, any reason why you're taking a list out of it?
>

2007-04-16, 7:55 am

In article <hnJUh.397719$8a4.15057@fe03.news.easynews.com>,
William M. Klein <wmklein@nospam.netcom.com> wrote:

[snip]

>As far as DD's note (humorous - I hope)
> The rate is $0 per year
> The location is wherever your computer is
> As I indicated in my original note, I will NOT use or distribute your
>email ID
>(if you respond), but you have to take my word for this (as well as the fact
>previously posted in this group, that I am not employed so wouldn't use such a
>list to make money any way.)

As humorous or a patellar or Babinski or any other reflex might be... I
see a posting about a job and the boilerplate just gets slapped on.

DD

William M. Klein

2007-04-17, 7:55 am

Just to clarify (a bit) what Jimmy says below and why I was posting my request.

Although WG4 give direction and J4 does the (grunt) work, it is actually ISO/IEC
JTC1 that does the FINAL voting (approval/disapproval) on international
Standards. There are currently 5 countries (US, UK, NL, Japan, and Germany)
that are "active" on WG4. There are 28 (or so) countries that vote on COBOL
Standards (along with all the other programming language standards and several
other things). In the recent XML vote, even though 4 of the 5 WG4 countries
"sent in votes" with comments, the VAST majority of other countries cast
"approve with no comments" votes. Therefore, although the comments from the 4
WG4 countries still MAY get "fixed", the XML proposal was "approved" (ballot
passed) because of the votes of the countries that don't participate in COBOL
standardization.

As I have indicated before (and will say again), the ISO (and ANSI)
standardization process is NOT "pretty" and (IMHO) not very effective. HOWEVER,
it is "what we have at the moment".

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
"James J. Gavan" <jgavandeletethis@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:LiZUh.85605$6m4.59216@pd7urf1no...
> Rene_Surop wrote:
>
> Rene,
>
> Write to the ISO in Geneva and tell them you have this Shoe Inventory
> application written in OO COBOL. All whistles and bells, takes care of colour
> co-ordination, even suggests which shoes to wear for a particular national
> day. Just plain fantastic.
>
> They want a reference to convince 'em - give 'em the e-mail address for Imelda
> Marcos.
>
> I knew you were using Dialog System, (reference your comments to Chris about
> the V 5.0 changes to put DS in sync with .Net), but I wasn't aware that you
> had gotten into 'pure' OO.
>
> ------------------------------------------
> As for the balloting you are asking about.
>
> Firstly it is the American ANSI Committee, J4 that deliberates on COBOL.
> Anybody, regardless of nationality can be a member of J4 providing they pay
> their dues, and attend regularly. (Obviously it also helps if they are
> interested in COBOL). They (J4) accept direction from ISO (WG4) on which
> topics to pursue, plus anybody can make written suggestions/recommendations to
> J4. After J4 have chewed it to death and converted into nice legal script,
> they then pass on their musings for consideration by ISO (WG4).
>
> Are you familiar with the Free Masons ? The COBOL ISO Committee, i.e. WG4 is
> tighter than a sheep's arse. Each ISO country interested in COBOL can have a
> country-membership for WG4, and the 'member-country' may be one, two or three
> people, (nationals from that particular country) - I don't know the maximum.
> It's a vote per country, so no indication of who was there and who was for or
> against a specific topic. Not too long back both China (PRC) and Ukraine were
> supposed to be putting in their two cents worth on Collections/Dictionaries -
> but I don't think it ever happened.
>
> In the due course of time ... how much time have you got ?.....your suggestion
> for a new gizmo above, may finish up in the next COBOL Standard after COBOL
> 2002 - and that Standard will be 2???.
>
> This link will take you to the J4 site if you want a bit of background on
> topics covered and the endless wish-list they still have to handle. Ignore the
> first part of the page, scroll down to where topics/papers are listed by date
> of submission - particularly the latest ones from Bill. (Naturally there is no
> such 'open source' for WG4 ) :-
>
> http://www.cobolstandard.info/j4/index.htm
>
> As you say you are using OO, do you code Collections/Dictionaries much,
> (particularly to fill Listboxes, Listviews or DropLists). N/E 'String Handling
> Library', for want of a name, covers
> characters/arrays/collections/dictionaries and is based on the proven
> Smalltalk 80 model. You might want to refer to J4's latest on this topic -
> 07-0048, dated March 17 - Bill elsewhere rejected this on behalf of Micro
> Focus - compare the J4 document with what is available in Net Express.
>
> The J4 document allows you to add and delete elements from a
> collection/dictionary (many forms of the 'add' like 'atput' etc., depending
> upon the collection type you are dealing with). So while you can add and
> delete, J4 rejected the suggestion that there should be a 'change' method.
>
> What do I know ? As of Smalltalk 80 there is a method defined as
> 'replaceWith.." - that's only TWENTY-SEVEN years ago. And in Net Express I
> have been using "replaceWith..." against Sorted Collections for the past TEN
> years.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Bill, help. Can you spell out the steps needed to access the J4 archived
> documents for previous years. Chuck got me some references once, but I didn't
> ask him how he did it.
>
> Jimmy

William M. Klein

2007-04-17, 7:55 am

Sorry, if my reply to your original note sounded "negative". I just wanted to
make it clear why I couldn't "follow-up" with someone who DID respond to my note
(on or off-list) who was in the Philippines.

Thank you for taking the time to look at and respond to my request.

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com
"Rene_Surop" <infodynamics_ph@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1176781525.693925.158520@n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
> Well, I guess I stand corrected.... the conditional statement is "AND"
> and not "OR.
>
> Question though, how is this balloting works anyway? Im from a very
> poor country working my sweat out studying and mastering Cobol for
> 20years now.... even dedicating my entire life for the language and
> yet.....
>
> Nah, it is likely that 3rd world countries do not have resources.
> Period.
>

William M. Klein

2007-04-17, 9:55 pm

Sorry Jimmy, but you are still missing a layer (or two) of burocracy.

WG4 is a working group under ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22.

The current members who can vote on final COBOL documents (not within the WG4
working group) are listed at:

http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/d...acts#membership

Specifically,

P" Members - 18
"P" Members - 18 Austria, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, France,
Germany, Ireland, Japan, Republic of Korea, Netherlands, Romania, Russian
Federation, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States of
America

"O" Members - 24

Argentina, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cuba, Egypt, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland,
India, Indonesia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Italy, DPR of Korea, Kenya,
Malaysia, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Serbia and Montenegro, Singapore,
Slovenia, Sweden, Thailand

****

That is the list that the Philipines are NOT on. For an overview of THIS layer,
see:

http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/

FYI, "O" members may send in comments, but only "P" members may vote. I believe
(but could be mistaken on this) that ONLY "P" members of SC22 may send (country)
delegations to WG4.

--
Bill Klein
wmklein <at> ix.netcom.com

"James J. Gavan" <jgavandeletethis@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:SJaVh.87834$6m4.80687@pd7urf1no...
> William M. Klein wrote:
> Bill,
>
> Thanks for the clarification, (or perhaps more accurately, the further
> confusion :-) ). I thought I had a handle on this one from some of the
> stuff Chuck used to post, plus yours. The whole thing is even worse than I
> thought.
>
> Anybody who is interested might want to check out the following :-
>
> http://www.iso.org/iso/en/aboutiso/...bers/index.html
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> ISO is made up of its members which are divided into three categories:
>
> *
> Member bodies
>
> A member body of ISO is the national body "most representative of
> standardization in its country". Only one such body for each country is
> accepted for membership of ISO. Member bodies are entitled to participate and
> exercise full voting rights on any technical committee and policy committee of
> ISO.
> *
> Correspondent members
>
> A correspondent member is usually an organization in a country which
> does not yet have a fully-developed national standards activity. Correspondent
> members do not take an active part in the technical and policy development
> work, but are entitled to be kept fully informed about the work of interest to
> them.
> *
> Subscriber members
>
> Subscriber membership has been established for countries with very small
> economies. Subscriber members pay reduced membership fees that nevertheless
> allow them to maintain contact with international standardization.
>
> MEMBERS : 158 - national standards bodies, comprising :-
>
> 103 - member bodies
> 46 - correspondent members
> 9 - subscriber
> members -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Thank God they don't all vote otherwise it could take 100 years to get a
> change through !
>
> Rene - there is an entry for the Philippines (BPS) and they are listed
> as a Member Body. Apart from the membership costs and your country's own
> particular form of bureaucratic bullshit, in theory you could be the
> Philippines' WG4 man/team.
>
>
> Jimmy

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