Rational Data Base Standards: An Examination of the 1978 CODASYL DDLC Report

The CODASYL Data Description Language committee's 1978 Report incorporates numerous enhancements and language changes made since the earlier 1971 and 1973 reports. Unfortunately, the major design limitations associated with these earlier specifications, in particular a schema facility too closely related to machine rather than enterprise requirements and an extremely limited subschema facility, are retained. After examination of these limitations, we suggest that the recent CODASYL specifications remain inappropriate as either an instance of an ANSI/SPARC three-schema architecture or as a candidate for a national data base system standard. A long term strategy for the development of a more rational proposal for standardization is suggested. And a short term strategy is offered, one that permits rational planning for and implementation of data base conversions to occur today, without concern that subsequently developed standards might render obsolete the conversion effort and data base management system selected.