COBOL Standards

J4/07-0112.doc -  June 15, 2007 :-

To:  SC22/WG4

Subject:  US National Body Status Report to WG4 and US National Body
Contribution of Recommendations for Revision of ISO/IEC 1989:2002

From:  Don Schricker

Regrettably, there will be no U.S. delegation at the 2007 WG4 meeting.
Therefore, this report conveys the status of the US national body work
and the US national body contribution of recommendations for revision of
ISO/IEC 1989:2002. etc...... "
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

If the above is not *exactly" clear, try the following from the COBOL
Frog, our buddy Huib Klink in the Netherlands representing Micro Focus :-

J4/07-0116 - June 19, 2007 :-

The status report to WG4 and recommendations for revision of ISO/IEC
1989:2002 should, in addition to its proposed contents, contain the
following information:

- The fact that it is highly likely that there will be no Chair for J4
after August of this year (2007);
- The level of likelity that any current J4 member wants to take on that
job.

etc...........
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--

How long is the body going to be beaten to death ?

Jimmy

"James J. Gavan" <jgavandeletethis@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:fCIei.51242$1i1.44631@pd7urf3no...
> J4/07-0112.doc -  June 15, 2007 :-
>
> To:  SC22/WG4
>
> Subject:  US National Body Status Report to WG4 and US National Body
> Contribution of Recommendations for Revision of ISO/IEC 1989:2002
>
> From:  Don Schricker
>
> Regrettably, there will be no U.S. delegation at the 2007 WG4 meeting.
> Therefore, this report conveys the status of the US national body work and
> the US national body contribution of recommendations for revision of
> ISO/IEC 1989:2002. etc...... "
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
>
> If the above is not *exactly" clear, try the following from the COBOL
> Frog, our buddy Huib Klink in the Netherlands representing Micro Focus :-
>
> J4/07-0116 - June 19, 2007 :-
>
> The status report to WG4 and recommendations for revision of ISO/IEC
> 1989:2002 should, in addition to its proposed contents, contain the
> following information:
>
> - The fact that it is highly likely that there will be no Chair for J4
> after August of this year (2007);
> - The level of likelity that any current J4 member wants to take on that
> job.
>
> etc...........
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
>
> How long is the body going to be beaten to death ?
>
> Jimmy

In a way, this is not a bad thing. If they 'fess up that they haven't got
the resources and nobody is really interested anyway, it might be possible
for a statement to be made that COBOL 2002 is the last edition of the
standard, and  it will stand with what is currently in it.  No new features,
and nothing to be added. A formal close to the Standards process which would
prevent wasting further time and money.

That means that any vendors who feel COBOL has a useful life for a few years
yet, could actually implement the 2002 standard without having to shoot at
an uncertain moving target. It might be of interest to some...

However, I suspect that most of them will simply implement what they feel
their customer base is interested in (in an effort to retain that base so it
can be moved to whatever comes next), and the Standard has long ago lost all
credibility for them. The majority will be looking to wind down their COBOL
maintenance or to provide options to their customers that will enable them
to transition to the new technology as painlessly as possible (a la IBM with
WebSphere and Java).

It would be nice to see the process formally ended rather than drawn out
with endless red tape and protocol.

Pete.

In article <5e1kulF36h1pqU1@mid.individual.net>,
Pete Dashwood <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote:

[snip]

>It would be nice to see the process formally ended rather than drawn out
>with endless red tape and protocol.

Many things would be nice, Mr Dashwood... but in this particular instance
one might keep in mind the Anciente Wisdome of 'any system is not to be
considered for decommissioning until at least two ws after the last
user has died'.

(the IBM 1401 was withdrawn in the early 1970s and yet emulators for that
machine were in use for at least a decade-and-change after that)

DD

<docdwarf@panix.com> wrote in message news:f5gcrf$p9n$1@reader2.panix.com...
 
>
> Many things would be nice, Mr Dashwood... but in this particular instance
> one might keep in mind the Anciente Wisdome of 'any system is not to be
> considered for decommissioning until at least two ws after the last
> user has died'.
>
> (the IBM 1401 was withdrawn in the early 1970s and yet emulators for that
> machine were in use for at least a decade-and-change after that)
>
> DD
>

There is another newsgroup I follow which also demonstrates the point -
comp.sys.prime - for all practical purposes this machine and O/S was
obsolete by about 1992; but there are still Pr1me (sic - that was one of
their trademarks) systems running, there are many more Prime applications
ported unchanged to other environments such as Unix, and emulators are being
developed as we speak.  There is even a small market for new development in
INFO-Basic, the original Prime language.  And there is no quibble over the
obsolescence of the system: although Prime Corp. made it to the top 500, the
company fell apart very swiftly when they were unable to provide any sort of
decent equivalent to GUI systems.  The machines and the O/S were
bullet-proof, the machines were small but amazingly efficient, but it was
green-screen-oriented and very labour intensive, not to mention
idiosynchratic.

Point being that even if Cobol development stops, it will be a very long
time indeed before all the applications written in it will be converted or
replaced.

PL

In article <YfSei.200059$mJ1.144475@newsfe22.lga>,
tlmfru <lacey@mts.net> wrote:
>
><docdwarf@panix.com> wrote in message news:f5gcrf$p9n$1@reader2.panix.com...[/color
]

[snip]
 
>
>There is another newsgroup I follow which also demonstrates the point -
>comp.sys.prime - for all practical purposes this machine and O/S was
>obsolete by about 1992; but there are still Pr1me (sic - that was one of
>their trademarks) systems running, there are many more Prime applications
>ported unchanged to other environments such as Unix, and emulators are bein
g
>developed as we speak.

[snip]

>Point being that even if Cobol development stops, it will be a very long
>time indeed before all the applications written in it will be converted or
>replaced.

It might be, Mr Lacey, that such things as 1401 emulators and PrimeOS
emulators just don't exist in some 'real worlds'... but that's all right,
in twenty years there's going to be... stuff.

DD

<docdwarf@panix.com> wrote in message news:f5gcrf$p9n$1@reader2.panix.com...
> In article <5e1kulF36h1pqU1@mid.individual.net>,
> Pete Dashwood <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote:
>
> [snip]
> 
>
> Many things would be nice, Mr Dashwood... but in this particular instance
> one might keep in mind the Anciente Wisdome of 'any system is not to be
> considered for decommissioning until at least two ws after the last
> user has died'.
>
> (the IBM 1401 was withdrawn in the early 1970s and yet emulators for that
> machine were in use for at least a decade-and-change after that)

Yes, I rermember running 1401 programs in emulation (it was called
"compatibility mode", and a little light that said that came up on the
console when it was engaged) on a 360-30 in 1968. They had sense switches
(same as UPSI, but physical hardware toggles) that were labelled A - H.
These had to be set on the 360 by dialing up memory addresses, checking the
console lights to see the correct bits were selected, and pressing: System
Reset (red button), ROAR Reset (grey button), and Start (a comforting green
button...). It was an error prone process. (I remember failing to set switch
F on a certain invoice run at 3 in the morning, and it had devastating
effects. Surprisingly (to me at least) my Boss didn't fire me. But I learned
to double check all settings after that.

We were all very keen to get rid of the 1401 apps and COBOL was the way to
go. I remember converting several Autocoder programs to COBOL which I had
just learned. We were tied to the 1401 because the best SORT available in
the South Pacific Program Library at that time (SORT 7) was written for
1401. I don't know of any site that strove to retain the 1401 software, but
the 1403 printers were in use, attached to 360s for many years afterwards.

It took us 9 months to get off the 1401 compatibility mode on our 360, and
we had a party when we did so...

Closing the standard on COBOL would not close the language. In fact, it
might be beneficial. The standards process for COBOL has been a farce for
years and has not helped the language or the perception of it by the
computer community.

I can't see any way in which dissociation from ANSI, WG4, J4 et al, could
possibly do COBOL any more harm than staying with them has done.

It's .

Pete.

"tlmfru" <lacey@mts.net> wrote in message
news:YfSei.200059$mJ1.144475@newsfe22.lga...
>
> <docdwarf@panix.com> wrote in message
> news:f5gcrf$p9n$1@reader2.panix.com... 
>
> There is another newsgroup I follow which also demonstrates the point -
> comp.sys.prime - for all practical purposes this machine and O/S was
> obsolete by about 1992; but there are still Pr1me (sic - that was one of
> their trademarks) systems running, there are many more Prime applications
> ported unchanged to other environments such as Unix, and emulators are
> being
> developed as we speak.  There is even a small market for new development
> in
> INFO-Basic, the original Prime language.  And there is no quibble over the
> obsolescence of the system: although Prime Corp. made it to the top 500,
> the
> company fell apart very swiftly when they were unable to provide any sort
> of
> decent equivalent to GUI systems.  The machines and the O/S were
> bullet-proof, the machines were small but amazingly efficient, but it was
> green-screen-oriented and very labour intensive, not to mention
> idiosynchratic.
>
> Point being that even if Cobol development stops, it will be a very long
> time indeed before all the applications written in it will be converted or
> replaced.
>

Sure. I didn't suggest otherwise. In fact, I said that vendors are likely to
develop what they believe is needed and wanted by their customer base, (just
as they have done for decades). The ANSI fiasco adds no value to it, that's
all.

Pete.

In article <5e2anhF36rmvuU1@mid.individual.net>,
Pete Dashwood <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote:
>
><docdwarf@panix.com> wrote in message news:f5gcrf$p9n$1@reader2.panix.com..
. 

[snip]

>It took us 9 months to get off the 1401 compatibility mode on our 360, and
>we had a party when we did so...

A pity I don't have IEEE membership; a Google search on 'ibm 1401
emulator' (no ') brought up an article entitled 'Software Lives Too Long'
at the URL
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel4/52/...?isNumber=15098 ; the
quote I could see was 'is a system written in IBM 1401 Autocoder. When.
the company replaced its aging 1401 with an IBM. 360/40 in the mid 1960s,
it purchased an emulator ...'

DD

<docdwarf@panix.com> wrote in message news:f5gtbf$n6j$1@reader2.panix.com...
 
that 
>
> [snip]
> 
and 
>
> A pity I don't have IEEE membership; a Google search on 'ibm 1401
> emulator' (no ') brought up an article entitled 'Software Lives Too Long'
> at the URL
> http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel4/52/...?isNumber=15098 ; the
> quote I could see was 'is a system written in IBM 1401 Autocoder. When.
> the company replaced its aging 1401 with an IBM. 360/40 in the mid 1960s,
> it purchased an emulator ...'
>
> DD
>

I heard Commander Hopper speak once on the devleopment of Cobol - she talked
about this - but if I remember right there she mentioned sort of emulation
of an even older machine - the 605? - on the 1401; then the 360 emulated the
1401 emulating the 605??? - emulation squared, as she put it!

PL

<docdwarf@panix.com> wrote in message news:f5gtbf$n6j$1@reader2.panix.com...
> In article <5e2anhF36rmvuU1@mid.individual.net>,
> Pete Dashwood <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote: 
>
> [snip]
> 
>
> A pity I don't have IEEE membership; a Google search on 'ibm 1401
> emulator' (no ') brought up an article entitled 'Software Lives Too Long'
> at the URL
> http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel4/52/...?isNumber=15098 ; the
> quote I could see was 'is a system written in IBM 1401 Autocoder. When.
> the company replaced its aging 1401 with an IBM. 360/40 in the mid 1960s,
> it purchased an emulator ...'
>
Maybe they chose not to use the IBM one that was an add-on in firmware. Same
as decimal arithmetic. The whole 'Packed' instruction set was an option on
early 360 models. The site I was on used IBM and, as I mentioned, the
console actually had a light that said "Compatibility mode" when you were
running in it.

Pete.