home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Newsgroups: alt.cobol
- Path: sparky!uunet!paladin.american.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!hela.iti.org!cs.widener.edu!iggy.GW.Vitalink.COM!pacbell.com!tandem!news
- From: Don Nelson <nelson_don@comm.tandem.com>
- Subject: Re: Re; Why COBOL for the 90's
- Message-ID: <1993Jan12.181130.11282@tandem.com>
- X-Xxdate: Tue, 12 Jan 93 19:24:17 GMT
- Sender: news@tandem.com
- Nntp-Posting-Host: 130.252.172.59
- Organization: Tandem Computers
- X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d7
- References: <93009.144631O79SI@CUNYVM.BITNET>
- Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 18:11:30 GMT
- Lines: 33
-
- In article <93009.144631O79SI@CUNYVM.BITNET> , O79SI@CUNYVM.BITNET writes:
- >Could you please tell me more about Object Cobol ?
- >like when its going to be in thr
- >market ? what's new in it ? thinngs like that
-
- Object-oriented COBOL is being developed by a sub-committee of ANSI
- X3J4 (the COBOL Committee). They are defining syntax and semantics to
- make COBOL work somewhat in the fashion of other object-oriented
- languages. That is, you can define an object in the Data Division and
- manipulate it like other data. The actual object can be a giant program.
-
- Obviously there is a lot more to it than that. They think the COBOL
- object-oriented stuff will be better than C++ and most of the other OO
- languages around. They are making changes that will not conflict with
- the
- rest of COBOL and will also allow one to make an existing program an
- object. Therefore, a COBOL programmer can continue to use regular COBOL
- or change to use the object stuff. They are supposed to have a fairly
- complete description of what it will look like shortly.
-
- Some vendors already say they have some object-oriented features.
- However, nobody has what the OO COBOL group is defining. All of us in
- the
- Standards arena hope that nobody implements anything until the definition
- is complete and solid. This should be a year or so from now. It may not
- make it into the next Standard (supposed to be 1995 or thereabouts), but
- if it misses it would appear shortly thereafter as an amendment.
-
- Don Nelson
- COBOL Development, Tandem Computers, Inc
- ex-Chariman, CODASYL COBOL Committee & member ANSI X3J4 COBOL Comm.
- nelson_don@comm.tandem.com
- No clever quotes here
-