CODASYL

CODASYL (often spelt Codasyl) is an acronym for COnference on DAta SYstems Languages . This was a Information_technology industry consortium formed in 1959 to guide the development of a standard programming language that could be used on many computers. This effort led to the development of COBOL.

CODASYL s members were individuals from industry and government involved in data processing activity. Its larger goal was to promote more effective data systems analysis, design, and implementation. The organization worked on various languages over the years but never actually standardized one. The standardization process was left to ANSI.

In of the database, another DDL to create one or more subschemas defining application views of the database; and a data manipulation language (DML) defining verbs for embedding in the COBOL programming language to request and update data in the database. Although the work was focused on COBOL, the idea of a host-language independent database was starting to emerge, prompted by IBM s advocacy of PL/I as a COBOL replacement.

In , while the COBOL DML was taken over by the COBOL language committee. With hindsight, this split had unfortunate consequences. The two groups never quite managed to synchronize their specifications, leaving vendors to patch up the differences. The inevitable consequence was a lack of interoperability among implementations.

A number of vendors implemented database products conforming (roughly) to the DBTG specifications: the most well-known implementations were Honeywell s Integrated Data Store (IDS/2), B.F._Goodrich s Integrated Database Management System IDMS, and Univac s DMS-1100.

Some of the CODASYL committees continue their work today, but CODASYL itself no longer exists. The records of CODASYL were donated to the Charles Babbage Institute and may be found at their website.

=Sources=

The Codasyl Approach to Data Base Management. T. William Olle. Wiley, 1978. ISBN 0471995797.

The Codasyl Model. J. S. Knowles and D. M. R. Bell, in Databases - Role and Structure , ed. P. M. Stocker, P. M. D. Gray, and M. P. Atkinson, CUP, 1984. ISBN 0521254302

=External links=

*[http://www.cbi.umn.edu/ Charles Babbage Institute] *[http://www.ee.und.ac.za/coursemain/DNE4DP2/sqlnotes/CODASYL.htm historical background] *[http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/cisq=CODASYL Citations from CiteSeer]