From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM, PP_MIME_FAKE_ASCII_TEXT,TO_NO_BRKTS_PCNT,T_FILL_THIS_FORM_SHORT autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII X-Google-Thread: 103376,c931174f6135fc6d,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: KMays@msn.com (Kenneth Mays) Subject: Ada news from ACM Date: 1996/02/17 Message-ID: <00001a73+00002816@msn.com> X-Deja-AN: 139872644 organization: The Microsoft Network (msn.com) newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-02-17T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Recent events and news about Ada related topics thanks to ACM SigAda ported to comp.lang.ada for your viewing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ada Education up 25% Last Year Version 8.0 of the CREASE (Catalog of Resources for Education in Ada and Software Engineering) has recently been completed and will be released in January 1996. The CREASE offers detailed information about 599 Ada courses offered by 323 institutions throughout the world. It also provides information about available Ada books and videotapes, computer-aided instruction and free educational resources. According to the data collected, the number of available Ada courses has grown by 25%, and the number of institutions offering Ada training has grown by 26% since the release of version 7 last year. Of the courses, nearly 15% have already moved up to Ada 95. To obtain a hard copy of the entire CREASE, please contact the AdaIC at 1-800/AdaIC-11. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Use of Ada in Germany On December 13, 1995, Ralf Fachet of Thomson Software Products German Division posted a note to comp.lang.ada noting the state of Ada usage in Germany: I do not agree with you for the German market where we are on of the major Ada Compiler vendor. In our country we have done this year the best Ada sales. Our statistics told us the we have done over 60% of our business outside the Mandated world. Ralf Fachet Sales Department Thomson Software Products Kleinoberfeld 7 D-76135 Karlsruhe phone +49(+721)98653-23 fax +49(+721)98653-98 mobil +49(+172)6702627 private +49(+7247)85726 (fax/phone) email fachet@thomsoft.de ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Use of Ada in GPS There is now a home page which describes the use of Ada software in many differnt Global Positioning System (GPS) components. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ada Core Technologies (ACT) Selected By Digital Equipment To Provide Ada 95 Solution For Digital's OpenVMS Alpha Platform Ada Core Technologies (ACT) and Digital Equipment Corporation announced today a partnership for ACT to provide an OpenVMS Alpha solution for Ada 95. Under the agreement, ACT will port GNAT to the OpenVMS Alpha platform and enhance it with digital-specific bindings. Availability is expected by the summer of 1996. Under the terms of the agreement, ACT will make available a fully functional, validated GNAT for OpenVMS Alpha. ACT will offer full support for this product, as it does for other GNAT targets. Contacts: Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies (212) 620-7300 (Ext 100) E-mail dewar@gnat.com Judith Abrahamovich Digital Equipment Corporation (508) 493-5660 E-mail judith@msbcs.enet.dec.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ACT and TLD Announce Strategic Alliance for Ada-95 Real-Time Products Ada Core Technologies (ACT) and TLD Systems, Ltd announced today an agreement to join forces to produce high quality Ada 95 systems for real-time and embedded products. Under the terms of the agreement, ACT will provide technical support and adaptation of the widely used GNAT Ada 95 technology, and TLD will adapt its cross-development tools for this environment. The two companies will work together to produce a run time system for optimal use in these environments. Contacts: Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies (212) 620-7300 (Ext 100) E-mail dewar@gnat.com Bob Risinger TLD Systems, Ltd. (310) 542-5433 E-mail tld@cerf.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ARA sponsored Ada Lovelace Programming Contest The Ada contest seeks to recognize the most readable, original, reusable, and clear working Ada programs. Like the Ada programming language, the contest is named in honor of the first programmer in history, Lady Ada Lovelace. This contest is open to all. Every two months, the ARA will pay US$ 750 to the best Ada code segment submitted. Submissions must be received by the 15th (midnight) of the "contest month" and the award will be announced at the end of the second month. A submission is made by emailing the source code to ara-contest@ocsystems.com The first contest closes December 15th, 1995. (Thus contest months will be February, April, June, August, October, and December.) On the 15th of the contest month an email message will be sent to the ARA mailing list indicating the FTP site from where those submissions may be downloaded. Submissions received after the 15th will be included in the next contest. The criteria: 1.May "with" previous winners, but is otherwise portable from compiler to compiler. The software may depend on a particular operating system or other commonly available software. 2.A good reusable component or elegant exposition 3.The copyright will be to the ARA with free use permitted. The original authors name, etc will be kept. 4.Unique A panel of independant judges will do the actual choosing and will use their own judgement to balance the criteria. Rather than micromanage the criteria, it is expected that the judges will use good reasoning to determine quality software. The judges may submit more specific direction to the ara mailing list for particular contests. Appropriate documentation and tests cases should be provided. To an appropriate extent, the judges discussions will be carried on in a public forum, such as comp.lang.ada so that others may come to understand the judges reasoning. In this manner, the contest can be viewed as a teaching/learning tool. The judges may (at their discretion) request changes to a submission. A non-winning submission may be submitted to the next bimonthly competition. The ARA will maintain the rules and a winners list on HBAP and winning entries on an ftp site. The idea here is to get a few high quality components and examples, rather than a large quantity of lesser reviewed components and examples. The first contest closes December 15th, 1995. The judges are Tucker Taft, Michael Feldman and Magnus Kempe. They may be sending additonal info to the ARA mailing list or comp.lang.ada Questions about the contest may be directed to ara-contest@ocsystems.com The ARA will maintain the rules and a list of winners on HBAP, and will store the winning entries on an FTP site. The purpose of that site is to accumulate a limited number of high quality components and examples, rather than a large quantity of low quality components and examples. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A Mention of the Ada Programming Language in an Upcoming Movie! Ada programmer and author Tom Strelich put a plug for the Ada language in the upcoming movie, Out There. The movie will premire on Sunday, November 19, 1995 at 8:00 P.M.on the Showtime cable movie channel. The Ada mention is about 45 minutes into the movie. Tom has graciously made previews of the movie available. This includes the a description of the movie, a script segment for the Ada plug, some still photos, and a quicktime version of the segment. Don't forget to watch! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ada as a Foundation Programming Language Michael Feldman the Chair of the ACM SIGAda Education Working Group produced the following summary of the use of Ada at colleges and universitites: This summarizes the colleges and universities known -- or at least credibly believed -- to have adopted Ada as a "foundation language," at CS1, CS2, or CS7 level in their computer science (or similar) curricula. I choose to keep track of precisely these courses because they are taken by students in either first or second year, and thus early enough to serve as a foundation upon which to build a large portion of the undergraduate software curriculum. This data is, for the most part, verifiable, based on first-hand reports from the teachers of those courses. In a few cases, publishers' textbook adoption data was used. I would like to keep this list as complete and up to date as possible, so please let me know of any additions or corrections. If your department has firm plans to switch to Ada in the 1996-97 academic year, I can add it to the list with a note to that effect. The trend information since 1991, when I first started keeping track of this information: Year Number of Institutions Introducing Ada in CS1 Number of Institutions Introducing Ada in CS2/7 Total 1991 20 20 40 1992 30 27 57 1993 52 33 85 1994 63 37 100 1995 92 40 132 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Update to IEEE Std 990 Jim Moore is leading an effort to update IEEE Std 990, Recommended Practice on PDL/Ada. The Recommended Practice was originally completed in 1987 and subsequently reaffirmed in 1992. According to IEEE CS procedures, it is again due for reconsideration in 1997. The recent approval of the Ada 95 standard, though, suggests that the Recommended Practice might be a candidate for revision in order to exploit many of the important principles of the language revision. Anyone wishing to participate in this effort should contact Jim directly. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Possible Updates to Validation Policy There is a revision of the Ada compiler validation policy being circulated for public comment. When finalized, it will be available on the AJPO host for reference and downloading. Test suite 2.0 for ACVC is currently in use Approximately 280 of the 3,406 tests have been withdrawn through the formal challenge process. An interim release (2.0.1) is planned for pre-release in December 1995 and official release in March 1996 that will include corrections to some of the tests that were withdrawn because of errors. ACVC 2.1 should include about 360 additional Ada 95 tests. The schedule calls for an unfrozen pre-release in March 1996, frozen pre-release in September 1996, and official use beginning in March 1997. Test suite use: ACVC 1.11 in use until March 1997 ACVC 2.0 in use from 31 March 1995 until 31 March 1996 passing requires passing all applicableAda9X basic tests ACVC 2.0.1 in use from 31 March 1996 until 31 March 1997 passing requires passing all applicable Ada9X basic tests and all of either the OOP tests or the real-time tests ACVC 2.1 in use from 31 March 1997 on. Passing requires passing all applicable Core tests. All validation certificates expire 31 March 1998. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Another Ada Success Story The article "Universal Engine Controller" in the September Embedded Systems Programming looks like another Ada success story. It describes a Navy project to control ship engines. Here are a few excerpts as summarized by Chris Daly: "Ada has some real virtues for embedded applications" "Ada was chosen as the implementation language, even though no one in the group at that time had much experience with it." "I think the timely and succesful completion of this project was due in large part to the choice of Ada. It made the hardware interfacing very straightforward and allowed us to adapt the original prototype software to a new hardware platform with relative ease." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Satisfaction with CS1 languages John W. McCormick of State University of New York, Plattsburgh, summarized the following information: The latest issue (Sept 95) of the SIGCSE Bulletin contains an article by Suzanne Pawlan Levy on satisfaction with languages used in CS1 (the first course in computer science). She sent surveys to all 139 schools listed in the Reid report as not using Pascal in CS1. 33% of the schools responded. Of the 57 responses, 16 used Ada, 18 used C, 7 used C++, 6 used Scheme, and 10 used other languages. She asked instructors to compare their language to Pascal for a variety of constructs (parameter passing, strings, support of software engineering, etc.). Her final survey question asked whether an instructor considers the language he/she is currently using to be the best language for the CS1 course. The results are: Ada 81% Scheme 66% C 29% C++ 28% ------------------------------------------------------------------------ New ATIP-P Program from AJPO Here is the announcement about the AJPO's Ada Technology Insertion Partnership Program. It appeared in the Commerce Business Daily on 9/18/95 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Experiences Using Ada by a German Company Alan E. Brain posted the following relating his experinces using Ada. I'm finishing working for a major German software Company (actually the Australian branch thereof). I have been Ada ing since it was Green. Examples: 3 projects: First is a Submarine combat system. Second a Surface Combat system. Third an AAW (Anti-Air Warfare) system grafted on to number 2. Project 1 was a bit of a disaster. Literally hundreds of C and Assembler hackers given 2 weeks training in Ada, then turned loose. Cost and schedule over-runs, the works. Yet despite the disaster, and costing probably 10 times what it could have, was deemed a success in comparison with conventional techniques. To quote I Ching "No Praise, No Blame". Project 2 was estimated at 20 man years by the standard techniques. All newbies on this one, we didn't have to re-train them, they knew that they knew not, so were amenable to such procedures as Peer Review, OOD, Information hiding, encapsulation, data typing and all that CMM stuff. It took 1.6 man years, was delivered on time, under budget. Project 3 delivered 8,000 SLOCs in 3 months, no Cat 3 PTRs after first 3 weeks of testing. No cat 1 or 2 PTRs at all. Used Chief Programmer approach, 6 man months total. NASA metric predicted 39+ Those are the measured figures. FWIW. New Ada Interface to SQL The ANSI committee responsible for SQL standards maintenance, X3H2, has approved a revision to the interface for Ada. The new interface uses the Ada's decimal data type to support SQL's NUMERIC data. This is a major step in Ada for Information Systems. Also included in the new interface is support for variable length strings and international character sets. Ada's abstraction features are used to advantage. The support for variable length strings is modeled on Ada.Strings. The new interface now goes to the international level (ISO/SC21/WG3) for approval as part of the Technical Corrigendum process. The new interface, if approved, will be part of TC-2, to be finalized at the next meeting of the WG3 DBL RG (see note) the week of 16 July. Use of the TC process greatly accelerates the approval cycle. A copy of the new interface is available for anonymous ftp at ftp.sei.cmu.edu as pub/marc/AdaSQL.ps ------------------------------------------------------------------------ New Ada 95 OOP Column In JOOP GooStarting with the July/August 1995 issue, the Journal of Object-Oriented Programming will include a column on Ada in each issue, written by Richard Riehle. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Two Articles from EE Times Talk Favorably about Ada An online mailing list has made available two articles from EE Times which talk very favorably about Ada and Ada 95. The first is on Object-Oriented Languages and the second is on Ada 95. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Job Outlook Good For Those With Ada Expertise Highly specialized software engineers are considered hot commodities to aerospace companies and their outsourcing providers, according to a recent article in Computerworld. It seems in the aerospace industry, highly specialized means an expert knowledge of Ada. James Diller, administrator of professional employment at the McDonnell Douglas Corp. commented, "Even though we've had some layoffs, we're always hiring for particular skills. Specifically, programmers with Ada, C and C++ expertise are in the highest demand ..." According to Computerworld, internships [which serve as a means of learning Ada] are becoming increasingly available. For example, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., offers four-year programs for undergraduates that include two internships as well as course work in Ada, C and Unix. Source: Scanlon, Bryan and Amy Bermar. "Jobs in Space." Computerworld, 5 June 1995: 107. Point of Contact: Computerworld - 508/879-0700 or for reprints, contact Sharon Bryant - 508/820-8125 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Object Application Awards Program Invites Entries Awards designed to showcase the best of custom applications using object-oriented approaches Kronberg, TS. -- January 28, 1995 -- Object Management Group, co-sponsor of Object World Frankfurt, is seeking submissions for The Second Annual Object Application Awards. Winners will be announced at Object World Frankfurt - The Software Event for Central Europe- on October 10, 1995. Chris Stone President and CEO of the Object Management Group will be the master of ceremonies. The awards will showcase innovative custom applications using object technology. Applications must be currently in use, not for resale, and must meet one of the following qualifications: �An application built from scratch �A modification of an off-the-shelf application �An object-oriented front end for a host application All entries must be postmarked by midnight, August 10, 1995. A panel of judges chiared by Prof. Roberto Zicari, OMG Central Europe, will select three finalists from each of the following five categories: �Best distributed application using object technology with legacy systems �Best application utilizing reusable components leveraged from or for use in other projects �Best object-based application developed using object oriented and non-object oriented tools �Best application demonstrating the costs/benefits of using object technology �Best use of object technology within an enterprise or large systems environment Finalists will be notified the week of September 20, 1995 and must have at least one company representative present at Object World Frankfurt on October 10, 1995. All entrants are required to complete an official entry kit. Entry kits can be obtained by contacting: Christiane Sattler The Object Application Awards c/o Object Management Group Frankfurter Str. 15, D-61476 Kronberg (Ts), Germany Tel: +49-6173-2852 Fax: +49-6173-940420 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Oliver E. Cole of OC Systems, Inc. posted the following note on Ada 95 Upward compatability on the comp.lang.ada newsgroup: Here is an interesting tidbit about the compatability of Ada83 and Ada95. The OCS products are written in Ada. We recently bootstrapped our product line in Ada95. There were no incompatabilities except in some packages where we implemented the new Ada95 constructs in our compiler. We had used some Ada95 reserved words while implementing the Ada95 constructs!! This was very simple to fix, but there is a lesson here somewhere (although I am not sure what it is). Anyway, there was no pain going from Ada83 to Ada95 and we have lots of code. Quit worrying. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A note from ACM SIGAda Vice-Chair for Meetings, Charlene Hayden, is now available. The note summarizes the results of the SIGAda Ada Awareness Campaign's latest outreach effort - a Booth at Object World in Boston, MA. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In October 1994 IEEE Portable Applications Standards Committee received approval from PASC to form a working group to define an Ada binding to XTI; in January 1995, the IEEE PASC received approval for an Ada binding to Sockets. These interfaces will provide the same functionality as the C interfaces, but will incorporate encapsulation, information hiding, and other features available in Ada. More detailed information is available. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The SIGAda Numerics Working Group (NUMWG) has produced two new international standards, as well as two additional draft international standards related to Ada numerics. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cool demonstration by SGI of an Ada 95 program interoperating with a C++ program. This demonstration occurred at TRI-Ada 94 in Baltimore. A copy of the netnews article by Tom Quiggle of SGI describing the software is available. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A copy of the memo by ASD(C3I) Emmet Paige authorizing early use of Ada 95 is available. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The following press release was based on a short article appearing in PC Week in December 1994: SUBJECT: SUBTRACT C, ADD ADA/ RESULTS MULTIPLY SOURCE: ZiffWire via Fulfillment by INDIVIDUAL, Inc. DATE: December 13, 1994 INDEX: [1] ORDER NO: 404094# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- PC Week via INDIVIDUAL, Inc. : Few managers can afford to do a software project several times, using teams with similar experience but different programming tools, to see if anything yields consistent improvements in speed or quality of work. At the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, though, Professor John McCormick has assigned the same project to each of his classes for about nine years, but switched languages at mid-decade. Working in teams of three or four, McCormick's real-time-programming students must write 15,000 lines of code to control a system that would need about 150 switches to operate using hardware alone. In the five years students used C, no team completed the project -- even when more than half of the code was provided. With Ada, however, half of the teams completed the project before any support code had even been written. With some support code now provided, three out of four teams finish the project. Specific factors in this improvement, according to McCormick, include both syntax and semantics. Ada leaves less room for single-keystroke errors, such as the common C error of using = (assignment) instead of == (comparison); its type-abstraction facilities reduce the need for error- prone pointer manipulation; and its modular facilities improve teams' coordination of effort. This experience, McCormick notes, "has convinced all my faculty colleagues to support teaching Ada in our beginning courses. This spring semester, the first students with Ada as their mother tongue will enroll in my course. I can only imagine what these teams will accomplish." -- P.C. A copy of the longer article by John McCormick that was orignally posted to Compuserve in response to Peter Coffee's query is available.