Which COBOL?

[Dimandja]

Here are some 'flavors' of COBOL: Power Cobol, CA-Realia COBOL, Acu-COBOL, Microfocus COBOL, Tiny COBOL,...

My questions:
1. Which COBOL is used on both PCs and mainframes?
2. What features are unique to each COBOL?
3. Which COBOL is Object Oriented?
4. Which COBOL is Web ready?
5. Which COBOL is best in price/performance?

Any other comments will be appreciated.

Dimandja

 

[Truusvlugindewind]

There is only 1 COBOL. That is ANSI-COBOL. You mention different compilers to compile and run ANSI-COBOL programs.
Some compilerbuilders add their own features to the language.
Those extra's make the difference.

Sometimes wou must add calls to the onderlying O.S. or subsystems. Then you have a CICS-COBOL program or a MS windows cobol program.

Any time now the 2002 ANSI standard will become official. From that time OO-COBOL is a fact.

 

[ctowns]

COBOL is one of the premiere languages where "standards" have been important to the development of the language definition. The Conference on Data System Languages (CODASYL) developed the language that was the first standardized business computer programming language.

COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) was developed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Defense in cooperation with computer manufactures, users and universities. COBOL was designed to be a business problem oriented, machine independent and capable of continuous change and development.
Since the first language definition in 1960, COBOL has undergone considerable updates and improvements. It continues to be the leading data processing language in the business world. The standard language specification has three levels low, middle and high so that standard COBOL can be implemented on computers of varying sizes.

Despite attempts at standardization, variations in COBOL implementations continue to exist. Most "deviations" or "extensions" are intended to take advantage of hardware or environmental features that were not defined in the standard definition.

American National Standards Institute (ANSI) developed a standard form of the COBOL language known as American National Standard (ANS) COBOL and released this version of the standard back in 1968. The ANS COBOL definition was an attempt was to overcome the incompatibilities of the different versions of COBOL. Standard revisions were approved in 1974 and also 1985 with follow-on "addendums" to further refine "ANSI" standard COBOL. Today, ISO and ANSI standards committees continue to work through the features of the latest revision of a COBOL Standard that is expected to be identified as COBOL 2002.

Conformance to a level of the COBOL standards was done through the NIST (National Institute of Standards Testing) and certified compliance was a requirement in order to sell equipment and COBOL to United States Government. This certification is no longer required and no significant certification testing has transpired since the mid-1990's.

Deciding which COBOL might be as simple as selecting a COBOL compiler for the operating platform you are using. If the decison is to select "one" compiler that will support "all" platforms you may be using, the decision will be very difficult since in reality there is not a single COBOL compiler that will support "all" operating platforms.

One choice is to select one compiler that will generate a COBOL application that will execute within the most operating environments from mainframe, mid-range, Unix Servers and the PC. If this is your selection criteria the list of vendors that provide a COBOL solution. My list would include LegacyJ PERCobol.