Status of object-oriented COBOL (panel)

Joel Van Stee started the discussion with an introduction of the panel members and a brief history of the task group generating the extensions. The original sponsor of the group was CODASYL, the ANSI COBOL committee’s design group. When CODASYL was absorbed by the ANSI COBOL committee, X3J4, the object-oriented committee was separately organized as a subcommittee of X3J4, and is now known as X3J4.1. It exists only as long as the parent ANSI COBOL committee considers this independent effort required. The aim of the two groups is to have a single COBOL standard targeted for publication in 1997. implementer approved techniques. The initial design decisions included assuring that the large base of code would not be invalidated by the object-oriented extensions.