Candidate Languages Evaluation Report.

Abstract : The main purpose of this report is to perform an evaluation of six High Order Languages -- TACPOL, CS-4, JOVIAL (J73/I), FORTRAN, COBOL, and PL/I -- with respect to the Department of Defense Requirements for High Order Computing Programming Languages ('Tinman'). These requirements were determined in a previous report to be consistent with the needed programming language characteristics for Army tactical and MIS applications. An evaluation tool is developed to assist in the investigation of the technical merit of the candidate languages, and management decision-making criteria are derived which take non-technical factors into account. The fundamental result of this study is that, among the six HOLs considered, CS-4 comes closest to satisfying the Tinman requirements. The reson for the closeness of fit is that the language objectives receiving high priority in the Tinman (reliability, maintainability, readability) are also basic design goals of CS-4. This report recommends CS-4 as a suitable basis for a common DoD language. Because of fundamental shortcomings in each of the other five HOLs, this report recommends that these HOLs not be used as the basis for a common language. (Author)