The Standardization and Evolution of the COBOL Language,

Abstract

Government-wide testing of COBOL compilers is the responsibility of the Federal COBOL Compiler Testing Service, an activity of the Department of the Navy's Automatic Data Processing Equipment Selection Office, Software Development Division. In May 1974, the American National Standards Institute approved ANS Programming Language COBOL, X3.23-1974 as the national standard for the COBOL language. Specifications for this revision were drawn from USA Standard COBOL X3.23-1968 and the CODASYL COBOL Journal of Development, dated 31 December 1971. As a result, the Testing Service is engaged in the development of a COBOL Compiler Validation System for this new Standard, incorporating tests for the revised language into the existing 1968 COBOL Compiler Validation System. The first part of the paper focuses on the rationale behind changes from the '68 to '74 COBOL Standard as well as highlighting the new features in the language. The second part of the paper discusses evolution within the COBOL language itself with respect to the CODASYL COBOL Journal of Development and several other CODASYL language activities. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 09, 1977
Accession Number
ADA039739

Entities

People

  • George N. Baird
  • L. Arnold Johnson
  • Margaret M. Cook
  • Patrick M. Hoyt
  • William M. Holmes

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Application Software
  • Compilers
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Costs
  • Data Processing
  • Data Processing Equipment
  • Debugging
  • Language
  • Operating Systems
  • Personal Information Managers
  • Processing Equipment
  • Programming Languages
  • Software Development
  • Specifications
  • Standards

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

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  • Computational Linguistics
  • Database Systems and Applications
  • Library and Information Science