The U.S. government offered encouragement by insisting that anyone attempting to
win government contracts for computer-related projects had to use COBOL. The
American National Standards Institute first standardized COBOL in 1968 and, in
1974, issued standards for another version known as ANSI-COBOL. After more than
seven controversial years of industry debate, the standard known as COBOL 85 was
approved, making COBOL a more usable modern-day software tool. The principal
benefit of standardization is that COBOL is relatively machine independent- that is, a
program written for one type of computer can be run with only slight modifications on
another type for which a COBOL compiler has been developed.
COBOL is very good for processing large files and performing relatively simple
business calculations, such as payroll or interest. A noteworthy feature of COBOL is
that it is English-like-far more so than FORTRAN or BASIC. The variable names are
set up in such a way that, even if you know nothing about programming, you can still
understand what the program does. For example:
IF SALES-AMOUNT IS GREATER THAN SALES-QUOTA
COMPUTE COMMISSION = MAX-RATE * SALES-AMOUNT
ELSE
COMPUTE COMMISSION = MIN-RATE * SALES-AMOUNT.
Once you understand programming principles, it is not too difficult to add COBOL to
