JTC1/SC22
N3964
From:ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22
Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces
Secretariat: U.S.A. (ANSI)
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 N3964
TITLE:
SC 22/WG 3 Business Plan/Convener's Report
DATE ASSIGNED:
2005-08-22
SOURCE:
SC 22/WG 4 Convenor (L. Dickey)
BACKWARD POINTER:
DOCUMENT TYPE:
Other document (Open)
PROJECT NUMBER:
STATUS:
This document is circulated for information and review. It will be
discussed at the 29 September-2 October 2005 SC 22 Plenary Meeting under
agenda item 8.1. This document is located at:
ACTION IDENTIFIER:
FYI
DUE DATE:
N/A
DISTRIBUTION:
text
CROSS REFERENCE:
DISTRIBUTION FORM:
Open
Sally Seitz
ANSI
25 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
Telephone: (212) 642-4918
Fax: (212) 840-2298
Email: sseitz@ansi.org <mailto:sseitz@ansi.org>
______________end of cover page, beginning of document_________
WG3 Business Plan and Convener's Report to the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 2003
Plenary
Period covered by this report: August 2004 to August 2005.
Date of preparation: August, 2005
Submitted by:
Prof. Leroy J Dickey
Convener, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 3
Faculty of Mathematics
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2L 3G1
E-mail: ljdickey@uwaterloo.ca
0. Outline
1. Summary
2. Period Review
3. Focus for the next work period
4. Other Items
5. Successes
------------------------- -------------------------
1. SUMMARY
1.1 JTC1/SC22/WG-3 Statement of Scope
Development and maintenance of ISO/IEC Standards
related to programming language APL
1.2 Project Report
1.2.1 Completed Projects
JTC 1.22.09.01 Programming Language APL, ISO/IEC 8485:1989
JTC 1.22.24.01 Programming Language Extended APL, IS 13751
1.2.2 Projects Underway
None
1.2.3 Canceled Projects
JTC 1.22.09.02 Character Repertoire for APL
JTC 1.22.24.02 Character Repertoire for Extended APL
Final copy was delivered in PDF format.
Work was suspended when contact with the
Editorial office was lost.
1.3 Cooperation and Competition
There are no competing standards for APL. The
international standards 8485 and 13751 stand out
as the primary references for APL implementers.
The Unicode Consortium kindly granted use of graphic
images which we have included with the APL Character
Repertoire.
2. PERIOD REVIEW
2.1 Market Requirements
APL is a general purpose computing language that continues to
excel at applications that benefit by the organization of data
in large arrays and has found users in a wide range of
applications involving financial, actuarial, manufacturing, and
management. The growth area is coming from areas that demand
higher performance and these needs are being met, largely by
faster hardware, but also by leaner implementations.
Outside the insurance industry, one of the major groups of
users is in the management and use of large financial data
sets. Stock trading history is a good example. Both APL and
some of its derivatives are highly successful in this area.
More on this in the Recent Successes section.
APL is still in use by one of the worlds largest airlines.
The main use is to optimize its schedules. The continued
success in this area shows how well the language scales
up to the problems it is used to solve.
In previous years we have reported the success of APL
in a major trading house. The big news his year
is with another house doing arbitrage with currency futures.
It is well documented that when a price moves outse
K and Kdb are still smashing successes with users of
the largest data sets. These highly
specialized tools are little known, outside their
sphere of application, but because of their focus, are
miles ahead of the competition.
The most amazing industry practice known to me is the
APL user whose client requires that their software be
delivered in
the programming language Ada. Because of the advantages
of offered by modeling in APL, development is done in
the higher level language and translated to Ada for
before delivery.
2.2 Achievements
The APL Working Group is proud to report that the
projects
JTC 1.22.09.01 Programming Language APL
JTC 1.22.24.01 Programming Language Extended APL
have resulted in high quality works that stand out as
the primary authority for APL implementors and
programmers. Likewise, the suspended project(s)
JTC 1.22.09.02 Character Repertoire for APL
JTC 1.22.24.02 Character Repertoire for Extended APL
made a positive impact on the APL community, and have
been adopted by IBM and other vendors, even though
the Geneva office was unable to work with the PDF
documents.
2.3 Resources
Since Berlin 2000, the APL working group has not met
face to face. For most APL experts, the exciting part
of the standards work is over because the interesting
technical decisions have been made. Examples of these
are the brilliant specialized functions such as "fuzzy
floor", and ever useful "domino" functions for
instance, which played a major role in ISO 8485 and the
more recently introduced items in IS 13751, such as (i)
the rank operator for arrays, (ii) the box and enclose
functions and (iii) the representation of complex
numbers and the all important value of (-1) raised to
the power (n/k), where n and k are positive integers.
As a consequence we have experienced a decline in
interest and participation. Candidates for project
editors are scarce.
3. FOCUS for the NEXT WORK PERIOD
3.1 Deliverables
The final text of the APL Character Repertoire in HTML
and PDF format is still available.
3.2 Strategies
3.2.1 Risks
In adition to the phenomenon mentioned above in the
second paragraph of section "2.3 Resources", a point of
contention is that some of the world's leading APL
experts, in some instances previously members of WG3,
have suffered from barriers to official participation
by their respective national bodies. It is my view
that qualified experts who volunteer their time should
be encouraged rather than turned away for pecuniary
reasons.
3.2.2 Opportunities
3.3 Work Program Priorities
3.3.1 First priority:
The editor for the APL Character Repertoire, is prepared
to deliver again, if requested.
3.3.2 Second priority:
No other projects are in view.
3.3.3
WG3, the APL Working Group, will continue into a
maintenance mode for the two standards APL (8485) and
APL Extended (13751) and will stand prepared to
provide interpretation and prepare corrigenda, as
needed.
4. Other Items
4.1 Action Requests for WG3
4.1.1
Renew ISO/IEC 8485, when it is time to do so.
4.1.2
Renew IS 13751, when it is time to do so.
4.1.3
New Project: Self Contained Array Specification
4.2 WG3 Meetings
Currently by electronic mail
4.3 Most Recent face-to-face Meeting
Berlin, 2000-07-23.
4.4 Future Meetings
Future meetings will continue by electronic mail, at the
least. No face-to-face meetings are scheduled at this
time.
5. Successes
We take the view that our successes are those of the
businesses that use our software. The striking example
referred to above is given here.
In previous years we have reported the success of APL
in a major trading house. The big news his year is
with another house doing currency arbitrage. It is
well understood that when a commodity price moves more
than one standard deviation away from its moving
average, it will quickly revert to the mean.
It has been reported in "Vector", a poblication of the
British Computer Society, that at Deutcshe Bank,
London, one area they experience a turn-around in 600
to 1000 milliseconds, and that 200 miliseconds of that
time is needed just to receive the information on the
latest transaction. This places great demands on the
system, to calculate the moving average and standard
deviation, and then, after a decision, to prepare the
orders and ship them out. It seems that now, the
language to beat is Kdb, a lean and mean dialect of
APL. Users are are now looking at the second order
effects caused by other slower traders, as the price
overshoots in the opposite direction, as a place they
can pick up another nibble.
----- end of convenor's report and business plan -----
Sally Seitz
Program Manager
ANSI
25 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
Phone: (212) 642-4918
Fax: (212) 840-2298
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