The National Bureau of Standards (Washington DC) has validation suites
for every FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) level of
COBOL. You have to pass the validation suite before you can be
certified as conforming to the FIPS, and you have to be certified in
order to sell to all federal and many private industry customers. The
good news is that the FIPS generally track the ANSI standards, so there
should be no surprises.
-=- Andrew Klossner (decvax!tektronix!tekecs!andrew) [UUCP]
(tekecs!andrew.tektronix@csnet-relay) [ARPA]