Friday, October 5, 2012

COBOL







OVERVIEW
COBOL stands for COmmon Business Oriented Language. It is one of the oldest programming languages being developed. It is the ideal choice for developing scalable, stable and reliable business applications. Though not highly encouraged today by most programmers and developers for being outdated, COBOL is still one of the most used programming languages these days.



HISTORY
The COBOL specification was created by a committee of researchers from private industry, universities, and government during the second half of 1959. The specifications were to a great extent inspired by the FLOW-MATIC language invented by Grace Hopper - commonly referred to as "the mother of the COBOL language." The IBM COMTRAN language invented by Bob Bemer was also drawn upon, but the FACT language specification from Honeywell was not distributed to committee members until late in the process and had relatively little impact. FLOW-MATIC's status as the only language of the bunch to have actually been implemented made it particularly attractive to the committee.

The scene was set on April 8, 1959 at a meeting of computer manufacturers, users, and university people at the University of Pennsylvania Computing Center. The United States Department of Defense subsequently agreed to sponsor and oversee the next activities. A meeting chaired by Charles A. Phillips was held at the Pentagon on May 28 and 29 of 1959 (exactly one year after the Zürich ALGOL 58 meeting); there it was decided to set up three committees: short, intermediate and long range (the last one was never actually formed). It was the Short Range Committee, chaired by Joseph Wegstein of the US National Bureau of Standards, that during the following months created a description of the first version of COBOL.[3] The committee was formed to recommend a short range approach to a common business language. The committee was made up of members representing six computer manufacturers and three government agencies. The six computer manufacturers were Burroughs Corporation, IBM, Minneapolis-Honeywell (Honeywell Labs), RCA, Sperry Rand, and Sylvania Electric Products. The three government agencies were the US Air Force, the Navy's David Taylor Model Basin, and the National Bureau of Standards (now National Institute of Standards and Technology). The intermediate-range committee was formed but never became operational. In the end a sub-committee of the Short Range Committee developed the specifications of the COBOL language. This sub-committee was made up of six individuals:
William Selden and Gertrude Tierney of IBM
Howard Bromberg and Howard Discount of RCA
Vernon Reeves and Jean E. Sammet of Sylvania Electric Products[4]
The decision to use the name "COBOL" was made at a meeting of the committee held on 18 September 1959. The subcommittee completed the specifications for COBOL in December 1959.


The first compilers for COBOL were subsequently implemented in 1960, and on December 6 and 7, essentially the same COBOL program ran on two different computer makes, an RCA computer and a Remington-Rand Univac computer, demonstrating that compatibility could be achieved.
--wikipedia
source: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL)


SIGNIFICANT LANGUAGE FEATURES
  • Allows names to be truly connotative - permits both long names (up to 30 characters) and word-connector characters (dashes)
  • Every variable is defined in detail - this includes number of decimal digits and the location of the implied decimal point
  • File records are also described with great detail, as are lines to be output to a printer - ideal for printing accounting reports
  • Offers object, visual programming environments
  • Class Libraries
  • Rapid Application Capabilities
  • Integration with the World Wide Web


COBOL, long associated with green screens, core dumps, and traditional mainframe connections, may at first glance seem at odds with object technology, push-button graphical interfaces, and interactive development environments. This perceived incongruity, however, is more a reflection of the mainframe’s ability to keep pace with the innovations of desktop and client-server computing than a flaw in the COBOL language
--source: 
http://groups.engin.umd.umich.edu/CIS/course.des/cis400/cobol/cobol.html

Quotations/Anecdotes:

"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence."
— Edsger Dijkstra


"I knew I’d hate COBOL the moment I saw they’d used perform instead of do."
— Larry Wall


"Cobol has almost no fervent enthusiasts. As a programming tool, it has roughly the sex appeal of a wrench."
— Charles Petzold





HELLO WORLD in COBOL
How to print "HELLO WORLD" in COBOL:


IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
      PROGRAM-ID. HELLO-WORLD.
      PROCEDURE DIVISION.
          DISPLAY 'Hello, world'.
          STOP RUN.



Sources:
http://www.microfocus.com/mcro/cobol/index.aspx
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/COBOL.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL
http://groups.engin.umd.umich.edu/CIS/course.des/cis400/cobol/cobol.html

Group comments:
"The language sucks, but not that much. Though yeah, it altered how programming should really be, but a good programmer knows how to appreciate the beauty of a very ugly language. Thus, if you are a good programmer, you should know how to appreciate COBOL!!"
    
          -De Ramos, Jesus Gerard L.


"It's like the ENGLISH language. It's not that hard to understand. Just learn the fuckin' syntax. hehehe! (sorry for the word)"

          -Encisa, Vizier R.

Authors:
CMSC124 T-5L

Abuso, Cedric

Dator, Erson Jon B.
2010-16193

De Ramos, Jesus Gerard L.
2010-04550

Encisa, Vizier
2010-53323

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