1.1 Title - Technical Report for a finalizer facility and directly associated object-oriented COBOL
language elements
1.2 Date Submitted - May 30, 2000
1.3 Proposer(s) - J4; No J4 primary members are members of NCITS, however,
some organizations are members of both committees.
2. Process Description for the Proposed Project
2.1 Project Type (Development or Revision) - DI
2.2 Type of Document - Technical Report (ISO type 2)
2.3 Definitions of Concepts and Special Terms
finalizer:
A pseudo-method that is invoked before the
storage of an instance object or a factory object is reclaimed.
2.4 Expected Relationship with Approved Reference Models,
Frameworks, Architectures, etc.
This technical report will be compatible with the revision of the COBOL standard that is
currently being developed as ISO/IEC 1989:yyyy and is dependent upon the
features specified in that revision.
2.5 Recommended NCITS Development Technical Committee (Existing or New) - J4
2.6 Anticipated Frequency and Duration of Meetings
J4 meets six times per year. Each meeting is from five to eleven days
long. This technical report should take no more than 2 days per meeting for two years.
Work on this TR will be done by email, in as much as possible, so that
experts in object orientation can participate with a minimal amount of travel.
Work on the full revision will be given priority over this technical
report.
2.7 Target Date for Initial Public Review (Milestone 4) - September 2001
2.8 Estimated Useful Life of Standard or Technical Report
The useful life of this technical report is expected to be about five
years, after which the finalizer facility expected to be incorporated in the
COBOL standard by revision or amendment.
3. Business Case for Developing the Proposed Standard or Technical Report
3.1 Description
A finalizer will be invoked
before the storage for an object is reclaimed so that resources can be freed.
The
technical report will specify the syntax of a finalizer and its semantics.
It
may be necessary to specify additional, or modify existing, language elements
in order to specify the finalizer facility, but
this will not be determined until the development phase of this project.
3.2. Existing Practice and the Need for a Standard
Several COBOL implementations support OO features from drafts of the COBOL
standard, however the draft does not include finalizers. Without
finalizers, cross-implementor OO COBOL programming is largely impossible due to the different way each
implementor may treat object destruction.
J4 considers the design of finalizers not yet stable enough for inclusion
in the draft standard.
Publication
of a technical report will give implementors an early design for finalizers,
so that there can be a high degree of compatibility in implementations. The writers of the COBOL standard can learn from
these implementations before including finalizers in a future standard.
3.3. Implementation Impacts of the Proposed Standard
3.3.1 Development Costs
- labor cost for technical editor = $15,000
- logistical costs for meetings: 240 persondays = $120,000 (2
days * 12 meetings * 10 people)
- work between meetings: 120 persondays = $60,000
Total: $195,000
3.3.2 Impact on Existing or Potential Markets
This technical report will help programmers use COBOL in an
object-oriented environment.
COBOL is a widely-used programming language, so the audience for this
technical report is immeasurably large.
The time required for implementors to conform to the technical report is
considerably less than the time it will save their customers.
3.3.3 Costs and Methods for Conformity Assessment
A suppliers' declaration of conformity is the expected means of conformity
assessment.
The requirements for conformity will be specified in the technical
report. The resources for specifying them are included in 3.3.1 of this
document.
3.3.4 Return on Investment
Implementors who conform to this technical report should have an increased
user base. Their cost of conforming to the next standard should be reduced.
3.4 Legal Considerations
3.4.1 Patent Assertions - None of which we are aware
3.4.2 Dissemination of the Standard or Technical Report
The acknowledgement in all published COBOL standards has made it possible
to use them without restriction. There are no other intellectual
property right (IPR) assertions
of which we are aware.
4.1 Existing Standards - none
4.2 Related Standards Activity
Projects NCITS/22-RI and ISO/IEC 22.01.07 for development of
ISO/IEC 1989:yyyy -- Programming Language COBOL are also assigned to J4 under national terms of reference.
4.3 Recommendations for Coordinating Liaison - none
4.4 Recommendations for Close Liaison - none