COBOL, IS IT GOING AWAY? :: essays research papers

On May 28, 1959, the Conference of Data Systems Languages (CODASYL) met for the first time with the idea of create a universal vocabulary for building fear applications. That language was COBOL. By 1960, COBOL was commercially ready, and for the next 20 years, more programs were create verbally in COBOL than in any other language. Influenced by FORTRAN, a programming language for the scientific community, and FlowMatic, the group recognized the growing needs of the business community. They thought that if the scientific programmers were going to get a single language, they could do the same for business. In April 1959, at an informal meeting at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, a small group of calculator manufacturers, large users and academics asked the Department of Defense (DOD) to brainiac the efforts (The Creation of COBOL,Brandel). The next month, the DOD called the first meeting of CODASYL, which consisted of eight computer manufacturers and a few large u sers. The DOD broke CODASYL into several committees, and by June, the nine member short-range committee was asked to undertake a six-month investigating into developing the language. DOD made COBOL mandatory for all suppliers of computing computer hardware and software who were bidding of defense procurements (Encyclopedia of Comp.Sci.,page350). This pressure resulted in persuading other suppliers to take away COBOL also and thus the programming language took off.In addition to form independence, one of the most important requirements of the language was simplicity. The committee wanted the language to be readable by laypeople, which led to the idea of using position (The Creation of COBOL,Brandel). In addition, computer manufacturers were trying to develop their commercial COBOL compilers season COBOLs specifications were being defined (Creation of COBOL,Brandel). A complete specification was holy in just six months. That was in December 1959. In 1974, COBOL formally changed to four-digit date fields, but that change obviously didnt catch on right away. The COBOL creators played a huge part in the renowned Y2K problem because of the use of two-digit year fields they used and did not beget in time. This huge problem cost many companies millions and they say that many of these companies will not solve the problem within their own business until even as late as 2008.The Y2K problem effected the humans as a whole and showed COBOLs impact globally. Analyst buckram Gartner estimates that applications managing about 85 percent of the worlds business data are written in COBOL.