Cobol, Is It Going Away?

On May 28, 1959, the Conference of Data Systems Languages (CODASYL) met for the first time with the idea of developing a universal language for building business applications. That language was COBOL. By 1960, COBOL was commercially ready, and for the next 20 years, more programs were written in COBOL than in any other language. Influenced by FORTRAN, a programming language for the scientific community, and FlowMatic, the group recognized the growing needs of the business community. They thought that if the scientific programmers were going to get a single language, they could do the same for business. In April 1959, at an informal meeting at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, a small group of computer manufacturers, large users and academics asked the Department of Defense (DOD) to head the efforts (The Creation of COBOL,Brandel). The next month, the DOD called the first meeting of CODASYL, which consisted of eight computer manufacturers and a few large users. The DOD broke CODASYL into several committees, and by June, the nine member "short-range committee" was asked to undertake a six-month investigation into developing the language. DOD made COBOL mandatory for all suppliers of computing hardware and software who were bidding of defense procurements (Encyclopedia of Comp.Sci.,page350). This pressure resulted in persuading other suppliers to adopt COBOL also and thus the programming language took off.

In addition to machine independence, one of the most important requirements of the language was simplicity. The committee wanted the language to be readable by laypeople, which led to the idea of using English (The Creation of COBOL,Brandel). In addition, computer manufacturers were trying to develop their commercial COBOL compilers while COBOL's specifications were being defined (Creation of COBOL,Brandel). A complete specification was finished in just six months. That was in December 1959. In 1974, COBOL officially changed to four-digit date fields, but that change obviously didn't catch on right away. The COBOL creators played a huge part in the famous Y2K problem because of the use of two-digit year fields they used and did not fix in time. This huge problem cost many companies millions and they say that many of these companies will not solve the problem within their own business until even as late as 2008.

The Y2K problem effected the world as a whole and showed COBOL's impact globally. Analyst firm Gartner estimates that applications managing about 85 percent of the world's business data are written in COBOL. No other language promotes as successfully a simple, self-documenting programming style. It is a fully developed standard with a proven track record, and is probably the most portable language. A program that was built to run on an IBM 390 in Germany will run on an HP3000 in Australia (www.tgc.com/dsstar/00/0404/101467.html). What's more, it is an existing standard, where other contenders like the Java language are yet to be. New COBOL standards are emerging that specifically support the Web with CGI scripting and XML support, as well as new data tools such as SQL Server, DB2, and Oracle. These new standards will result in future use of COBOL throughout the global enterprise (www.aboutlegacy.com/get_email.html).

As I researched COBOL I found it very interesting that although some companies are weeding out the use of COBOL, many others are not. I focused on the fact that while computer science students at large universities focus on newer languages such as C++ and Java, companies like Safeco, Computer Horizons Corp., and Spiegel Group still need COBOL programmers to maintain current mainframe computer systems. I also found the starting salary ranges for these companies and that these ranges were rising as a whole with these companies and others as well. This has led me to believe that COBOL, the 40-year-old computer language isn't going anywhere in the near future, and specifically for these companies in their future business plans.

Safeco discovered five years ago that it could not find university graduated willing to take a COBOL job. The experienced COBOL programmers were too expensive. Safeco representatives said it would be impossible to convert Safeco's huge mainframe computer system, which was developed in the 1960's, to a client-server system. So rather than rely on colleges and universities to train COBOL programmers, Safeco started its own training regimen (Internetweek,Flash). The company, known for its business suit dress code and chimes that tell employees when to take breaks, start their rookie COBOL programmers at salaries in the high $30,000-a-year rate, and then increases their pay when they pass the class (Internetweek,Flash). As I researched more I found that today Safeco is moving away from using COBOL and is now using the Trillium Software System. The Trillium Software System gives an organization the ability to establish a consistent, repeatable process for data cleansing, standardization and customer matching. Using Trillium, Safeco is able to slowly move away from its in-house text analysis system that is time consuming to maintain. Safeco is currently using the Trillium Software System to develop specific data standardization policies and business rules for data validation and customer matching. As a result, Safeco has been able to externalize its business rules, no longer depending on time-consuming COBOL programming (www.tgc.com/dsstar/00/0404/101467.html).

While Safeco is moving away from COBOL, Computer Horizons Corp. is not. Computer Horizons Corp. runs COBOL classes for companies throughout the country. Even though the demand for COBOL programmers has dropped off somewhat. Since the Y2K scare passed, demand for mainframe training is still high, said Dana Haag, director of sales for the Troy, Michigan companies education division (Internetweek,Flash).