Calligraphy and Computer Standards

Like my friend John Piggott who felt pride in contributing to the COMMON GOOD some of the "giant steps" that COBOL took in its earliest years of development came from the manufacturers "donating" other proprietary development tools, i.e. Flowmatic, and all the official attributions printed in front of all CODASYL standing documents.
In some sense this spirit of "the common good" has waned over the years as a result of a more competitive business community. More specifically, over the last 2 and a half decades (it being 2005 presently), the competitive playing field has narrowed in scope an now has only one, simple, easy-to-measure criteria to measure success - the bottom line. He who returns the most on an investment wins - simple. It became less relevant how you accomplished this task and more important that you maximized r.o.i. for your stakeholders. As a result many other priorities (mostly social) have been put aside. These other priorities represent counter forces to the most (only?) important measure of success - the bottom line.This requires a paradigm shift.

More Jerry Garfunkel
While attending hundreds of ANSI, ISO, CODASYL, PLSG, SPARC, WG4, CEG, ECMA, SMTG, OOC, WG11, WG10, X3J4, SC22, X3 committee meetings around the world, I found myself "doodling" a lot. Mixed in with my meeting, conference and panel notes over 20 + years, are hundreds of pages that look like this.

Amsterdam June, 1992 Attending this twelfth international COBOL committee meeting (ISO/SC22/WG4) in Amsterdam was Professor Martin Healy, noted British scholar (Cardiff University, Wales). Dr. Healy and I were frequent co-presentors at European conferences. We remain friends to this day. (Hello Martin.)	Amsterdam June 1992 The VALIDATE facility is a non-procedural approach to data validation. That is, rather than describe the process (logical steps) of validating data fields in the PROCEDURE DIVISION, the programmer instead describes in the DATA DIVISION what is valid and what is not valid for every data item. The single COBOL verb VALIDATE, in the Procedure Division assures that the content of each field meets its qualifying criteria. John Piggott noted British computer scientist, developed the VALIDATE facility for a proprietary product and later donated his work and helped the international COBOL committee incorporate it into the COBOL language. There are other examples of non-procedural features in COBOL, most notably, the REPORT WRITER functionality. There are some who think (or once thought) that if properly constructed, the COBOL language with all of its current functionality could be reconfigured as a "data-driven" language consisting only of "non-procedural" features such as Report Writer, Validate, I/O (GENERATE, VALIDATE, READ, WRITE, etc). - i.e. why not UPDATE?
Colleague Don Nelson - the Godfather of COBOL - created masterpieces of doodling art at each meeting. I wonder if (and hope) Don saved his "doodles." Don went to Stamford University and lived his adult life in the Bay area around Palo Alto. Micro Focus, my client and employer for many years were headquartered in Palo Alto. So the Bay area became a frequent destination for me. I befriended Don and his wife Lee and spent many nice dinners around the world with both of them.
Donnington Valley, UK 13, August
One of the notable periods in COBOL's history was the attempt to stop the evolution of COBOL in the early 1980's. (Notice I referenced the 1980's rather than the '80s.) Led by Joseph Brophy of Travelers Insurance, a campaign was launched by a coalition of business leaders to challenge the purpose and the legality of issuing an updated version of the ANSI standard COBOL - ANSI COBOL 85, the successor to ANSI standard COBOL 74. So much happened in the application development community in the decade between COBOL 74 and COBOL 85, primarily structured systems design and program development. The more that COBOL 85 was delayed, the quicker it was becoming irrelevant to programming methods and procedures in the commercial application development community. Excaserbating this problem, COBOL 85 had been "frozen" in new content in 1979. That is all the new technology in COBOL 85 could have been available in compilers ny 1980. The challenge to the next COBOL standard caused a 5 year delay in introducing the new features of COBOL 85. Most of these new features facilitated structured programming techniques		Newbury , Berkshire, UK August 1993 The fourteenth meeting of the International COBOL committee (ISO/SC22/WG4) was hosted by Micro Focus Ltd, in Donnington Valley, Berkshire. This meeting had broad participation. Because this meeting was held in the UK, it attracted scholars from the British Computer Society, including Professor Rod Graelish (Staffordshire Univ), Brian Watts (De Montfort University) and John Piggott (Wimbledon). Countries represented at this meeting were Japan, Canada, France, The Netherlands, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany. Ab de Lange Dutch Ministry of Defense joined Wim Ebbinkhuijsen from the Netherlands.
Like my friend John Piggott who felt pride in contributing to the COMMON GOOD some of the "giant steps" that COBOL took in its earliest years of development came from the manufacturers "donating" other proprietary development tools, i.e. Flowmatic, and all the official attributions printed in front of all CODASYL standing documents. In some sense this spirit of "the common good" has waned over the years as a result of a more competitive business community. More specifically, over the last 2 and a half decades (it being 2005 presently), the competitive playing field has narrowed in scope an now has only one, simple, easy-to-measure criteria to measure success - the bottom line. He who returns the most on an investment wins - simple. It became less relevant how you accomplished this task and more important that you maximized r.o.i. for your stakeholders. As a result many other priorities (mostly social) have been put aside. These other priorities represent counter forces to the most (only?) important measure of success - the bottom line.This requires a paradigm shift.

Campbell, California February 1993 IBM's unofficial users group, GUIDE (and SHARE), has been an active participant in the COBOL development process for a long time. At various times GUIDE has been a primary member (voting) and an official observer (without voting privileges). Sue Anstead represented GUIDE at this American COBOL committee (X3J4). I presented a "preference list" of new COBOL 9X features to the upcoming GUIDE conference to solicit their input. Some of the early conflicts between mainframe COBOL and PC COBOL began to emerge at this meeting. Some features, like Screen Management, were contentious items.	Florida March 1993 At this twelfth meeting of the International COBOL committee, held in Orlando Florida, in Feb 1993, the elimination of the GO TO statement was considered among other technical issues. Occasionally, the International COBOL committee meets twice a year, rather than the usual once. especially when the committee gets close to finalizing the new COBOL standard. This was the first of two meetings in 1993 of the international COBOL committee (ISO/SC22/WG4).	Newbury , Berkshire, UK July 1992 The many meetings held in Newbury, Berkshire, UK were hosted by Micro Focus Ltd . MF was for a long time the leader in COBOL application development in the micro computer community. That position was challenged at various times by AcuCOBOL, Fujitsu COBOL, Realia COBOL (Computer Associates), Ryan-McFarland. Dave McFarland, co-founder of Ryan-McFarland COBOL, subsequently sold his interest in RM COBOL and began a computer training service for guests on luxury cruise ships.
Don Schricker, another outstanding scholar in the COBOL community, is the current (and longtime) chairperson of the (ANSI) NSITS X3J4 Committee. He took over the chairmanship of X3J4 from Don Warren of Wang. Don Schricker has been involved in the COBOL standards community for as long as I have been. We joined the CODASYL COBOL Committee (CCC) within two months of each other in 1979. When I first met Don, he lived in Minnesota and represented NCR on the CCC. Later, Don moved his family to San Diego and later to New Hampshire (metropolitan Boston) where he worked for Wang. He later joined Micro Focus, Ltd where he and I were colleagues for some years. Don continues to represent Micro Focus and to chair X3J4. He now resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. It takes an extraordinary amount of talent (technical and political) to steer the COBOL language development effort through its course . Don has made it look easy for many years.
	Approximately two months of speaking and committee engagements.
La Jolla, California January 1992 This was the historic joint meeting between the ANSI COBOL Committee (X3J4) and the CODASYL COBOL Committee (CCC). This 5-day meeting marked the last official meeting of the CCC. The CCC ceased to exist after nearly 33 years (1959). The membership of the CCC, which served as COBOL's technical development team, merged into the ANSI X3J4 committee. Some "enduring" members appear at most meetings and have had a long history of contributing to the development of the COBOL language. They have generally been anonymous except for those who followed the COBOL development process. John Brieschke, UNISYS, is one such scholar. John came to UNISYS from the Univac side of the Univac/Burroughs merger. He was a primary member of both the American COBOL Committee (ANSI X3J4) and the CODASYL COBOL Committee (CCC). John, a life long resident of Minnesota, was a country music lover and an avid ice hockey player. He got me to broaden my music horizons over the years. He introduced me to Gillie 's in Texas, mechanical bull and all. John could name the starting lineup of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers. I thought that was extraordinary for a boy who grew up in Minnesota.
I've met so many good friends in so many good places and have had so many good times, as a by-product of my COBOL committee participation (IT Standards). Some of these business associates became life long personal friends. Professor John Triance, formerly of UMIST and Micro Focus, is one of those friends. I first met John at a CODASYL COBOL Committee meeting in Manchester UK in 1980. We became good friends quickly and have remained so for twenty-five years. We've watched each others' family grow up. John and his wife Doreen have visited me in America many times; I have been their guests in Birkshire, frequently.

Newbury, Berkshire, UK January 1992	Newport Beach California, June 1993 At this meeting of the Object Oriented COBOL Committee, Raymond Obin, Micro Focus, gave a technical tutorial to the X3J4.1 members. "Garbage collection" has nothing to do with waste management. It is the term used to manage objects in memory.
Wim Ebbinkhuijsen, has been the leader of the Dutch COBOL delegation to the International COBOL Committee (ISO/SC22/WG4) for many years. His name appears in all of my notes from the International COBOL Committee meetings over the years around the globe. Wim and I met in Vienna Austria in 1984. We quickly became good friend sand remain so today. I have spent many wonderful hours, days and weeks with Wim (and his family). Wim joined my family in 1991 in Austria to celebrate my mother's 80th birthday. We have had some great adventures together. Wim still is one of the most active international members of the COBOL committee and well respected by his peers.

Nice, France April 1994 At this International COBOL meeting, the integration of Object Orientation into COBOL was the main topic. I lost the effort to get the new OO COBOL syntax to be more COBOL-like and less Smalltalk-like. The object oriented system design methods of the 90's is directly related to structured methods developed in the 70's. COBOL programmers are more familiar with OO concepts than they themselves realize: Persistence, Recursion, Re-usability, Methods, Data classes, inheritance and much more. I felt that if Object Oriented COBOL is to retain any intuition and familiarity it would have to be in the Class Libraries that are created with common COBOL objects and methods. (verbs and macros and procedures.) I felt that these Class libraries should be organized by and "incorporated" into COBOL.		Nice, France April 1994 My wife Carol, flew to Nice to meet me for a combined vacation and international COBOL committee meeting. We rented a motorcycle and explored the Riviera, eastward, through Monte Carlo, into Italy to San Remo. Carol was killed in an accident 63 days later.
At the Vienna meeting of ISO SC22/WG4 COBOL committee, in 1984, I left the committee room late one morning along with the Dutch representative (Wim Ebbinkhuijsen) and the French representative (George Lewin). We went across the street to a neighborhood pub. Over lunch I wrote a draft proposal for the Amendment process that I had proposed to the American COBOL Committee sometime earlier. It went nowhere in the American Committee. The Amendment process allowed us to update the COBOL language more often in shorter cycles and generate less incompatibility issues. The proposal had the support of all the non-American delegations. Only my own American delegation opposed it. As a result of that meeting, I was tagged as a "rebel" within the American delegation, a label I wore with no shame within the American IT Standards community (ANSI X3). I was beholding to nobody except the imaginary constituency I felt I represented - COBOL application programmers.

Orlando, Florida ISO WG4 Feb 1993	Zaandam, Netherlands My friend Wim (Ebbinkhuijsen) and I reminisced about some of our times together on the COBOL committees. Here is a partial list of these memories; each could be a chapter in an adventurous tale of a long distance (international) friendship. > our trek across Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia to bring gifts and essentials to an orphanage in Bucharest, Rumania, > our early morning horseback ride and sunrise breakfast in the Arizona desert, organized by our friend Paul Hall of Honeywell (every year), > our (frequent) trips to the Grand Canyon in northwestern Arizona, also courtesy of our good friend and proud Arizonian, Paul Hall. > the celebration of COBOL's 40th anniversary in San Diego California aboard the USS Grace Murray Hopper in port for this occasion. > others to come and be expanded upon.
Other wonderful memories with Wim (Ebbinkhuijsen): > walking along the beach in Nice, photos of friends > Vienna squares and bridges in the evening - and the opera > straw votes with real straws in London (a little "blitzed") > the "coup" in 1984/85 when WG4 took control of COBOL and forced COBOL 85 publication > the wonderful women we have both met

Zaandam, Netherlands	Cupertino, California 25 - 26 May, 1992
I always admired the IBM representatives at the various COBOL committee meetings because they generally were the target of many personal challenges. Some thought that simply because IBM was IBM gave IBM an extra responsibility of defending its king-of-the-hill position. It demanded an extraordinary amount of diplomacy, patience and technical expertise to rise to the occasion. Marilyn Sander was just such a COBOL expert. She had everyone's respect on the committee. She also had a good sense of humor - perhaps a requirement. She was always an excellent IBM technical ambassador, whom I thought was under-appreciated within her organization.

	Orlando, Florida ISO WG4 March 1993	Orlando, Florida ISO WG4 March 1993