From rinehuls@access.digex.net Sat Aug 1 00:16:14 1998 Received: from access1.digex.net (qlrhmEbBUV1EY@access1.digex.net [205.197.245.192]) by dkuug.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id AAA27781 for ; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 00:16:13 +0200 Received: from localhost (rinehuls@localhost) by access1.digex.net (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id SAA08671 for ; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 18:16:10 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 18:16:09 -0400 (EDT) From: "william c. rinehuls" To: sc22docs@dkuug.dk Subject: SC22 N2775 - WG4 Convener Report/Business Plan for Plenary Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII _______________________ beginning of title page ______________________ ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces Secretariat: U.S.A. (ANSI) ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 N2775 TITLE: WG4 Business Plan and WG4 Convener's Report for the August 1998 JTC 1/ SC22 Plenary DATE ASSIGNED: 1998-07-31 SOURCE: Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 BACKWARD POINTER: N/A DOCUMENT TYPE: WG Convener's Report PROJECT NUMBER: N/A STATUS: This document will be on the agenda for the August 1998 JTC 1/SC22 Plenary. ACTION IDENTIFIER: FYI DUE DATE: N/A DISTRIBUTION: Text CROSS REFERENCE: N/A DISTRIBUTION FORM: Def Address reply to: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Secretariat William C. Rinehuls 8457 Rushing Creek Court Springfield, VA 22153 USA Telephone: +1 (703) 912-9680 Fax: +1 (703) 912-2973 email: rinehuls@access.digex.net ___________________ end of title page; beginning of report ____________ Business Plan and Convener's Report ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG4 (Programming Language COBOL) PERIOD COVERED: September 1997 - July 1998 SUBMITTED BY: Ann Wallace Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG4 IBM DZ6/E22 P.O. Box 49023 San Jose, CA 95161-9023 Phone: +1 408 463-4344 Fax: +2 408 463-2425 Email: AnnWallace@us.ibm.com 1. MANAGEMENT SUMMARY 1.1 JTC1/SC22/WG4 STATEMENT OF SCOPE Development and maintenance of ISO/IEC standards related to programming language COBOL. 1.2 PROJECT REPORT 1.2.1 COMPLETED PROJECTS None in this period. 1.2.2 PROJECTS UNDERWAY 22.01.07 Revision of ISO 1989:1985 -- Combined CD registration and CD ballots N2260 closed in January 1997. The summary of voting is contained in N2382. WG4 responded to comments in N2616. Technical development of changes in response to accepted comments is nearly complete and the draft is now undergoing a quality review in WG4 and J4. Following rework resulting from that review, the draft will be forwarded for Final CD ballot. 1.2.3 MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES None in this period. 1.2.4 CANCELLED PROJECTS None 1.2.5 COOPERATION AND COMPETITION WG4 cooperates closely with NCITS COBOL Technical Committee J4, to whom SC22 has delegated the technical development and maintenance of COBOL. WG4 has liaisons with the following groups: Open Group COBOL working group (category C) - Michel Dessier of Bull France SC22/WG20 - Ann Wallace SC22/WG11 - Don Nelson WG4 is dependent on WG20's TR 10176 for specification of extended characters in identifiers, on 14651 for cultural ordering support, and on 14652 for locale specifications. 2. PERIOD REVIEW 2.1 MARKET REQUIREMENTS COBOL continues to be widely used for new development and for enhancement and re-engineering of existing applications. Many factors drive the market for COBOL standardization: a. Deployment of applications to workstations and distributed environments and the growth of COBOL in Unix environments has generated requirements for new features in the language. These needs have been met by implementor extensions to the language, in different ways by different implementors, leading to a need for post-implementation standardization. b. Market pressure for new technology led COBOL vendors to cooperate on object-oriented design through the standardization process. Early implementations of the object-oriented features in the draft are now available and users are designing them into new applications. c. Growth of COBOL in the Unix market led X/Open to develop a Common Application Environment (CAE) providing a portable definition of features essential in a Unix environment but lacking in standard COBOL. The need for portability with non-Unix platforms has resulted in a requirement for inclusion of these features in the international standard. d. While business-oriented features are a main-stay of COBOL, the many services and interfaces in today's environments demand a wider variety of data types and better interoperation of COBOL with other programming languages. e. Technology advances and resulting spread of computers to end users makes it mandatory that computer systems adapt to the languages of users. This gives rise to a need in COBOL for support of large character sets and cultural adaptibility. f. The impact of year 2000 date handling generated a requirement for portable year-2000 features in the draft standard, which are now being widely implemented. The current draft revision addresses a great many of the market requirements for COBOL, but not all of them. Even as the draft standard progresses, new requirements are evolving. With the current trend to web-based operation, users are beginning to reconfigure existing COBOL applications as servers integrated with web clients. COBOL vendors are starting to introduce language extensions to support this environment. Thus, continued evolution of the international standard for COBOL is essential to provide the benefits of new technolgies and new environments to COBOL users worldwide. 2.2 ACHIEVEMENTS WG4 produced N2616, Disposition of Comments Report, in response to comments on CD 1 and has nearly completed technical changes in response to accepted comments. 2.3 RESOURCES WG4 meets as needed, usually once a year. Six countries participate in meetings: Canada, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands, the UK, and the USA. J4 has 11 members participating in detailed technical development, 7 COBOL vendor organizations and 4 user organizations. 3. FOCUS NEXT WORK PERIOD WG4 will focus on preparing the draft standard for Final CD ballot. During the FCD ballot period, WG4 will consider plans for development of an object-oriented class library technical report and will process any defect reports submitted against the current COBOL standard. 3.1 DELIVERABLES WG4 anticipates delivering a document for Final CD ballot 4/99. 3.2 STRATEGIES The focus will be on improving quality of the draft through review by WG4, J4, and other technical contributors. 3.3 RISKS There are no anticipated risks at this time. 3.4 OPPORTUNITIES None 3.5 WORK PROGRAM PRIORITIES WG4's highest priority is preparation of the draft for Final CD ballot. The next priority is development of an object-oriented class library technical report, followed by processing of defects reported for the current standard. 4. OTHER ITEMS (CONVENOR'S REPORT ON ITEMS NOT INCLUDED IN THE BUSINESS PLAN) 4.1 ACTIONS REQUESTS AT THE FORTHCOMING PLENARY None 4.2 SCHEDULE Project 22.01.07 appears to be relatively on schedule. Although significant effort will be required to remain on schedule, no changes are foreseen at this time. 4.3 WG4 MEETINGS 4.3.1 MEETINGS IN CURRENT REPORTING PERIOD None 4.3.2 FUTURE MEETINGS November 16-20, 1998, Carmel, CA. USA (co-located with J4 meeting) November 14-19, 1999 -- tentative 4.4 ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT DISTRIBUTION Most WG4 documents are distributed by posting on the web site provided by Denmark. _______________________ end of SC22 N2775 ____________________________