Applied Data Research, Inc. (ADR), was a large software vendor from the 1960s until the mid-1980s. ADR is often described as "the first independent software vendor ".
53-522: Founded in 1959, ADR was originally a contract development company. ADR eventually built a series of its own products. ADR's widely used major packages included: Autoflow for automatic flowcharting, which is often cited as one of the first commercial software applications; Roscoe , a remote job submission environment; MetaCOBOL, an extensible macro processor for the COBOL language; and The Librarian , for source-code management. The company's original office
106-521: A fourth-generation programming language . ADR licensed DATACOM/DB to TCSC, a firm which sold modified versions of IBM's DOS/360 and DOS/VS operating systems, known as Edos . When, in 1980, Nixdorf Computer bought TCSC, Nixdorf sought to continue the licensing arrangement; ADR and NCSC went to court in a dispute over whether the licensing arrangement was terminated by the acquisition. ADR and Nixdorf settled out of court in 1981, with an agreement that Nixdorf could continue to resell ADR's products. ADR
159-514: A "strong anti-IBM bias" from some committee members (herself included). In one case, after Roy Goldfinger, author of the COMTRAN manual and intermediate-range committee member, attended a subcommittee meeting to support his language and encourage the use of algebraic expressions, Grace Hopper sent a memo to the short-range committee reiterating Sperry Rand's efforts to create a language based on English. In 1980, Grace Hopper commented that "COBOL 60
212-667: A formal meeting on common business languages. Representatives included Grace Hopper (inventor of the English-like data processing language FLOW-MATIC ), Jean Sammet , and Saul Gorn . At the April meeting, the group asked the Department of Defense (DoD) to sponsor an effort to create a common business language. The delegation impressed Charles A. Phillips, director of the Data System Research Staff at
265-458: A holding company for Pacific Bell (and its subsidiary Nevada Bell ) and Southern New England Telephone . The Ameritech name was used in the storyline of the U.S. television miniseries Amerika to refer to one of the "sovereign" autonomous regions —Ameritech's regional operating area, the Great Lakes area of North America —that the former United States was divided into in result of
318-435: A language that could work in a wide variety of environments, from banking and insurance to utilities and inventory control. They agreed unanimously that more people should be able to program and that the new language should not be restricted by the limitations of contemporary technology. A majority agreed that the language should make maximal use of English, be capable of change, be machine-independent, and be easy to use, even at
371-429: A lead designer of COBOL, said Hopper "was not the mother, creator, or developer of Cobol." IBM's COMTRAN language, invented by Bob Bemer , was regarded as a competitor to FLOW-MATIC by a short-range committee made up of colleagues of Grace Hopper. Some of its features were not incorporated into COBOL so that it would not look like IBM had dominated the design process, and Jean Sammet said in 1981 that there had been
424-576: A more robust file management system. The usefulness of the committee's work was a subject of great debate. While some members thought the language had too many compromises and was the result of design by committee , others felt it was better than the three languages examined. Some felt the language was too complex; others, too simple. Controversial features included those some considered useless or too advanced for data processing users. Such features included Boolean expressions , formulas , and table subscripts (indices). Another point of controversy
477-754: A new language. The deadline was met with disbelief by the short-range committee. One member, Betty Holberton , described the three-month deadline as "gross optimism" and doubted that the language really would be a stopgap. The steering committee met on 4 June and agreed to name the entire activity the Committee on Data Systems Languages , or CODASYL , and to form an executive committee. The short-range committee members represented six computer manufacturers and three government agencies. The computer manufacturers were Burroughs Corporation , IBM , Minneapolis-Honeywell (Honeywell Labs), RCA , Sperry Rand , and Sylvania Electric Products . The government agencies were
530-453: A programming language for business operations in mainframes, although in recent years, many COBOL operations have been moved to cloud computing . In the late 1950s, computer users and manufacturers were becoming concerned about the rising cost of programming. A 1959 survey had found that in any data processing installation, the programming cost US$ 800,000 on average and that translating programs to run on new hardware would cost US$ 600,000. At
583-461: A time when new programming languages were proliferating , the same survey suggested that if a common business-oriented language were used, conversion would be far cheaper and faster. On 8 April 1959, Mary K. Hawes , a computer scientist at Burroughs Corporation , called a meeting of representatives from academia, computer users, and manufacturers at the University of Pennsylvania to organize
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#1732786891490636-653: A total cleanup, and, by March 1963, it was reported that COBOL's syntax was as definable as ALGOL 's, although semantic ambiguities remained. COBOL is a difficult language to write a compiler for, due to the large syntax and many optional elements within syntactic constructs, as well as the need to generate efficient code for a language with many possible data representations, implicit type conversions, and necessary set-ups for I/O operations. Early COBOL compilers were primitive and slow. A 1962 US Navy evaluation found compilation speeds of 3–11 statements per minute. By mid-1964, they had increased to 11–1000 statements per minute. It
689-468: Is 95% FLOW-MATIC" and that COMTRAN had had an "extremely small" influence. Furthermore, she said that she would claim that work was influenced by both FLOW-MATIC and COMTRAN only to "keep other people happy [so they] wouldn't try to knock us out.". Features from COMTRAN incorporated into COBOL included formulas, the PICTURE clause , an improved IF statement, which obviated the need for GO TOs , and
742-500: Is based on a Single address space architecture . The RPF (Roscoe Programming Facility) is a scripting language with string processing capability. ADR bought Massachusetts Computer Associates , also known as Compass, in the late 1960s. ADR later purchased the Datacom/DB database management system from Insyte Datacom and developed the companion product, IDEAL (Interactive Development Environment for an Application’s Life),
795-793: Is made by any contributor or by the CODASYL COBOL Committee as to the accuracy and functioning of the programming system and language. Moreover, no responsibility is assumed by any contributor or by the committee in connection therewith. The authors and copyright holders of the copyrighted material used herein are as follows: FLOW-MATIC (trademark of Unisys Corporation ), Programming for the UNIVAC (R) I and II, Data Automation Systems, copyrighted 1958, 1959, by Unisys Corporation; IBM Commercial Translator Form No. F28-8013, copyrighted 1959 by IBM; FACT, DSI 27A5260-2760, copyrighted 1960 by Minneapolis-Honeywell. They have specifically authorized
848-583: Is primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments. COBOL is still widely used in applications deployed on mainframe computers , such as large-scale batch and transaction processing jobs. Many large financial institutions were developing new systems in the language as late as 2006, but most programming in COBOL today is purely to maintain existing applications. Programs are being moved to new platforms, rewritten in modern languages, or replaced with other software. COBOL
901-406: Is split into four divisions (identification, environment, data, and procedure), containing a rigid hierarchy of sections, paragraphs, and sentences. Lacking a large standard library , the standard specifies 43 statements, 87 functions, and just one class. Academic computer scientists were generally uninterested in business applications when COBOL was created and were not involved in its design; it
954-453: Is unclear who coined the name "COBOL", although Bob Bemer later claimed it had been his suggestion. In October, the intermediate-range committee received copies of the FACT language specification created by Roy Nutt . Its features impressed the committee so much that they passed a resolution to base COBOL on it. This was a blow to the short-range committee, who had made good progress on
1007-717: The U.S. Air Force , the Navy's David Taylor Model Basin , and the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology). The committee was chaired by Joseph Wegstein of the U.S. National Bureau of Standards. Work began by investigating data descriptions, statements, existing applications, and user experiences. The committee mainly examined the FLOW-MATIC , AIMACO , and COMTRAN programming languages. The FLOW-MATIC language
1060-553: The 1990s. Ameritech Advanced Data Services (AADS) Network Access Point (NAP) was one of the original four National Science Foundation exchange points in the United States starting in 1994. AADS was a Tier 1 network Internet Exchange Point in Chicago, Illinois that provided service to higher education and research networks via a program called Star TAP and commercial networks. After the merger with SBC, AADS did business as
1113-638: The ANSI committee, the CODASYL Programming Language Committee was working on improving the language. They described new versions in 1968, 1969, 1970, and 1973, including changes such as new inter-program communication, debugging, and file merging facilities, as well as improved string handling and library inclusion features. Ameritech AT&T Teleholdings, Inc. , formerly known as Ameritech Corporation (and before that American Information Technologies Corporation ),
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#17327868914901166-863: The COBOL Maintenance Committee to answer questions from users and vendors and to improve and expand the specifications. During 1960, the list of manufacturers planning to build COBOL compilers grew. By September, five more manufacturers had joined CODASYL ( Bendix , Control Data Corporation , General Electric (GE), National Cash Register , and Philco ), and all represented manufacturers had announced COBOL compilers. GE and IBM planned to integrate COBOL into their own languages, GECOM and COMTRAN, respectively. In contrast, International Computers and Tabulators planned to replace their language, CODEL, with COBOL. Meanwhile, RCA and Sperry Rand worked on creating COBOL compilers. The first COBOL program ran on 17 August on an RCA 501. On 6 and 7 December,
1219-477: The DoD, who thought that they "thoroughly understood" the DoD's problems. The DoD operated 225 computers, had 175 more on order, and had spent over $ 200 million on implementing programs to run on them. Portable programs would save time, reduce costs, and ease modernization. Charles Phillips agreed to sponsor the meeting, and tasked the delegation with drafting the agenda. On 28 and 29 May 1959 (exactly one year after
1272-651: The Midwest. Under its umbrella were: For Ameritech's first nine years, it maintained these Bell brands inherited from the Bell System—though public displays of the Bell companies' names were often captioned "An Ameritech Company". In January 1993, Ameritech officially retired the Bell brands and marketed itself with solely the Ameritech name across all five states in its territory. It added " d/b/a Ameritech (state)" to
1325-596: The SBC Network Access Point or SBC/AADS NAP. Prior to its merger with SBC Communications , Ameritech's corporate headquarters were in a leased space above the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on floors 34 through 39 of 30 S Wacker Dr, Chicago . Further corporate offices were located at 225 W Randolph St, Chicago (formerly "The Illinois Bell Building") and 2000 W. Ameritech Center Drive, Hoffman Estates ) ("The Ameritech Center"). It
1378-458: The United States of America Standards Institute (now ANSI ) formed groups to create standards. ANSI produced USA Standard COBOL X3.23 in August 1968, which became the cornerstone for later versions. This version was known as American National Standard (ANS) COBOL and was adopted by ISO in 1972. By 1970, COBOL had become the most widely used programming language in the world. Independently of
1431-590: The Zürich ALGOL 58 meeting), a meeting was held at the Pentagon to discuss the creation of a common programming language for business. It was attended by 41 people and was chaired by Phillips. The Department of Defense was concerned about whether it could run the same data processing programs on different computers. FORTRAN , the only mainstream language at the time, lacked the features needed to write such programs. Representatives enthusiastically described
1484-459: The committee was too large to make any further progress quickly. A frustrated Howard Bromberg bought a $ 15 tombstone with "COBOL" engraved on it and sent it to Charles Phillips to demonstrate his displeasure. A subcommittee was formed to analyze existing languages and was made up of six individuals: The subcommittee did most of the work creating the specification, leaving the short-range committee to review and modify their work before producing
1537-471: The company into its Systems Products Division and new Information Products Division. Roscoe was marketed as CA-Roscoe, and The Librarian became known as CA Librarian. COBOL COBOL ( / ˈ k oʊ b ɒ l , - b ɔː l / ; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative , procedural , and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL
1590-627: The company moved to a facility further along Route 206, that was just north of Princeton in Montgomery Township, New Jersey . ADR received the first patent issued for a computer program , a sorting system, on April 23, 1968. The program was developed by Martin Goetz . In this effort, ADR enlisted support of the Association of Data Processing Service Organizations (ADAPSO), which argued that being able to patent software innovations
1643-484: The executive committee on 4 September. They fell short of expectations: Joseph Wegstein noted that "it contains rough spots and requires some additions," and Bob Bemer later described them as a "hodgepodge." The committee was given until December to improve it. At a mid-September meeting, the committee discussed the new language's name. Suggestions included "BUSY" (Business System), "INFOSYL" (Information System Language), and "COCOSYL" (Common Computer Systems Language). It
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1696-475: The expense of power. The meeting resulted in the creation of a steering committee and short, intermediate, and long-range committees. The short-range committee was given until September (three months) to produce specifications for an interim language, which would then be improved upon by the other committees. Their official mission, however, was to identify the strengths and weaknesses of existing programming languages; it did not explicitly direct them to create
1749-452: The finished specification. The specifications were approved by the executive committee on 8 January 1960, and sent to the government printing office, which printed them as COBOL 60 . The language's stated objectives were to allow efficient, portable programs to be easily written, to allow users to move to new systems with minimal effort and cost, and to be suitable for inexperienced programmers. The CODASYL Executive Committee later created
1802-516: The merger, Ameritech's Chairman and CEO was Richard Notebaert , who later (in 2002) became CEO of competitor Qwest . On January 15, 2003, SBC Communications changed its d.b.a. names, changed the legal name of Ameritech Corp. to SBC Teleholdings, Inc. , which began doing business as SBC Midwest . On January 15, 2006, d.b.a names were again changed to align with SBC's assumption of the AT&;T brand identity following its acquisition of AT&T Corp.
1855-459: The names of its Bells to communicate brand unity. Ameritech also owned Ameritech Cellular , a wireless company that operated cellular networks in many of the major cities of these states. Ameritech Cellular was previously called Ameritech Mobile Communications . Ameritech also provided cable television service in select areas as part of the Americast venture with other phone companies during
1908-472: The previous year, and Ameritech was again renamed, becoming AT&T Teleholdings, Inc. and began doing business as AT&T Midwest . Several Ameritech subsidiaries remain legally named "Ameritech", such as Ameritech Advanced Services; however, they do business as "AT&T Advanced Solutions". In 2006, the holding companies Pacific Telesis and Southern New England Telecommunications were legally merged into AT&T Teleholdings. The company then became
1961-491: The same COBOL program (albeit with minor changes) ran on an RCA computer and a Remington-Rand Univac computer, demonstrating that compatibility could be achieved. The relative influence of the languages that were used is still indicated in the recommended advisory printed in all COBOL reference manuals: COBOL is an industry language and is not the property of any company or group of companies, or of any organization or group of organizations. No warranty, expressed or implied,
2014-426: The specification. Despite being technically superior, FACT had not been created with portability in mind or through manufacturer and user consensus. It also lacked a demonstrable implementation, allowing supporters of a FLOW-MATIC-based COBOL to overturn the resolution. RCA representative Howard Bromberg also blocked FACT, so that RCA's work on a COBOL implementation would not go to waste. It soon became apparent that
2067-424: The support of ADAPSO. In 1970, ADR and Programmatics, a wholly owned subsidiary of ADR, received an out-of-court settlement of $ 1.4 million from IBM. IBM also agreed to serve as a supplier of Autoflow, which meant another potential $ 600,000 in revenues for ADR. A popular ADR product was The Librarian , a version control system for IBM mainframe operating systems. In 1978, it was reported that The Librarian
2120-494: The use of this material, in whole or in part, in the COBOL specifications. Such authorization extends to the reproduction and use of COBOL specifications in programming manuals or similar publications. It is rather unlikely that Cobol will be around by the end of the decade. Anonymous, June 1960 Many logical flaws were found in COBOL 60 , leading General Electric's Charles Katz to warn that it could not be interpreted unambiguously. A reluctant short-term committee performed
2173-477: Was standardized in 1968 and has been revised five times. Expansions include support for structured and object-oriented programming . The current standard is ISO / IEC 1989:2023. COBOL statements have prose syntax such as MOVE x TO y , which was designed to be self-documenting and highly readable. However, it is verbose and uses over 300 reserved words compared to the succinct and mathematically inspired syntax of other languages. The COBOL code
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2226-450: Was (effectively) designed from the ground up as a computer language for business, with an emphasis on inputs and outputs, whose only data types were numbers and strings of text. COBOL has been criticized for its verbosity, design process, and poor support for structured programming . These weaknesses result in monolithic programs that are hard to comprehend as a whole, despite their local readability. For years, COBOL has been assumed as
2279-521: Was an American telecommunications company that arose out of the 1984 AT&T divestiture . Ameritech was one of the seven Regional Bell Operating Companies created following the breakup of the Bell System . Ameritech was acquired in 1999 by SBC Communications, which subsequently acquired AT&T Corporation in 2006, becoming the present-day AT&T . Ameritech was created as a holding company that owned five former Bell System companies in
2332-485: Was designed in 1959 by CODASYL and was partly based on the programming language FLOW-MATIC , designed by Grace Hopper . It was created as part of a U.S. Department of Defense effort to create a portable programming language for data processing. It was originally seen as a stopgap, but the Defense Department promptly pressured computer manufacturers to provide it, resulting in its widespread adoption. It
2385-475: Was in a small office building along U.S. Route 206 in Princeton Township, New Jersey . Later during the 1960s, they were part of a data center located on Route 206 across from Princeton Airport . The center was destroyed by fire in 1969 when a light plane crashed into it on approach to the airport, but there were no serious injuries among either the pilot or the workers in the building. In 1980,
2438-437: Was in use at over 3,000 sites; by a decade later that number had doubled. Roscoe (Remote OS Conversational Operating Environment, originally marketed as ROSCOE, was a software product for IBM Mainframes. It is a text editor and also provides some operating system functionality such as the ability to submit batch jobs similar to ISPF or XEDIT . The ability to support 200+ concurrent active users and still have low overhead
2491-432: Was observed that increasing memory would drastically increase speed and that compilation costs varied wildly: costs per statement were between $ 0.23 and $ 18.91. In late 1962, IBM announced that COBOL would be their primary development language and that development of COMTRAN would cease. The COBOL specification was revised three times in the five years after its publication. COBOL-60 was replaced in 1961 by COBOL-61. This
2544-484: Was particularly influential because it had been implemented and because AIMACO was a derivative of it with only minor changes. FLOW-MATIC's inventor, Grace Hopper, also served as a technical adviser to the committee. FLOW-MATIC's major contributions to COBOL were long variable names, English words for commands, and the separation of data descriptions and instructions. Hopper is sometimes called "the mother of COBOL" or "the grandmother of COBOL", although Jean Sammet ,
2597-460: Was sold to Ameritech in 1986 and was kept intact as a subsidiary . In 1988 Ameritech sold ADR to Computer Associates (CA). Computer Associates had a reputation for mass dismissals within companies it took over; this was the case with ADR as well, as some 200 employees from the Montgomery facility were let go on the morning of October 19, 1988. Computer Associates subsequently integrated
2650-567: Was then replaced by the COBOL-61 Extended specifications in 1963, which introduced the sort and report writer facilities. The added facilities corrected flaws identified by Honeywell in late 1959 in a letter to the short-range committee. COBOL Edition 1965 brought further clarifications to the specifications and introduced facilities for handling mass storage files and tables . Efforts began to standardize COBOL to overcome incompatibilities between versions. In late 1962, both ISO and
2703-466: Was traded on the NYSE under the "AIT" symbol. In May 1998, Ameritech announced its intent to merge with SBC Communications . This brought great concern to Federal and state regulators, who in turn didn't approve the merger until SBC and Ameritech agreed to several conditions to ensure adequate competition. Most notably, regulators required: SBC and Ameritech officially merged on October 8, 1999. Prior to
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#17327868914902756-562: Was vital to smaller companies being able to succeed in the market against larger companies, who would otherwise be able to imitate a product and bundle it as a free addition to their other offerings. ADR instigated litigation in Federal Court against IBM with accusations that IBM was "retarding the growth of the independent software industry" and "monopolizing the software industry", leading to IBM's famous unbundling of software and services in 1969. Legal actions against IBM also had
2809-509: Was whether to make keywords context-sensitive and the effect that would have on readability. Although context-sensitive keywords were rejected, the approach was later used in PL/I and partially in COBOL from 2002. Little consideration was given to interactivity , interaction with operating systems (few existed at that time), and functions (thought of as purely mathematical and of no use in data processing). The specifications were presented to
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