Re: DoD and NIST undermining commercial CASE industry

[psinntp!vitro.com!news@uunet.uu.net (Morris J. Zwick)]

In article <1992Dec3.093920.19673@sei.cmu.edu> firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth)
writes:
>
>You're right; thanks for reminding us of this.  PCTE and CASE have a
>lot of overlap, but are not the same thing.  As you also mention, it
>is not certain that PCTE-based systems will become the dominant CASE
>systems, though personally I think it highly likely.
>
>>It is also oversimplifying to look at this issue as having only two possible
>>results: ATIS or PCTE. 
>
>Well, actually, I was looking at the issue as having only one possible
>result.  This isn't really a technical issue; international standards
>aren't really decided on technical issues, which is why we have QWERTY
>keyboards.
>
>However, of the competitors, PCTE has the most diverse support in
>the global market; if you accept Emeraude as a realistic "proof of
>concept", then I can't see any potential competitor displacing it
>on technical grounds.
>
>>At present PCTE and ATIS are not end user solutions, but only technologies.
>
>Again I agree - but this seems to me the critical issue.  The key problem
>is not the lack of end user solutions, but the lack of the "enabling
>technologies" that will open the door to end user solutions - solutions
>built by numerous third parties, competitively, but all with a high
>degree of compatibility and interoperability.
>
>As a poor analogy, consider PostScript (TM).  This is an enabling technology
>that alows you to buy any of a dozen machines, drawing programs, printers
>and display units, plug them together, and do useful work.  That's the
>kind of rationale behind PCTE, and I think it's the critical step in
>allowing us similarly to "mix and match" our software development tools.
>
>Well, is PCTE at the point the VHS de-facto standard reached, where any
>attempt to compete will go the way of Betamax?  In my view, yes, but as
>always feel free to disagree.
>

If you have seen the Emeraude implementation, then you would understand the
trepidation that many of us have about standardizing on PCTE! There are several
efforts, funded by the DoD (NGCR PSESWG, PCIS, etc.) that are looking at
available standards for environments. Having participated on some of these
groups, I can tell you that there are NO definitive standards that provide the
necessary "infrastructure" for developing environments. As it stands, PCTE is
NOT able to deal well with many different environment problems, including
fine-grained data models. In fact, rumor has it that the Europeans do not
understand our fascination with PCTE; they consider it currently to be an
academic exercise. If PCTE where so complete and definitive, there would be
more implementations.

As far as ATIS and PCTE, it is very difficult to compare the two since in some
ways they overlap and in other ways they provide unique capabilities. I would
like to see some of the harmonization efforts that are taking place to continue
until the technology matures enough to be useful.

Which leads me to my last point; the technology for this stuff is NEW,
IMMATURE, and not ready for prime time. You cannot standardize until some
concensus (preferably in the marketplace) has taken place to establish what
should be standardized. And as far as losing our edge to Europe in software aka
automobiles, how about this analogy:

The United States was the leading producer of automobiles for most of this
century. We developed the production technology, management techniques
(including statistical quality control, which we didn't implement until it was
too late), and the basic technologies in the vehicles themselves. The Japanese
now kick our butts! Sounds to me like we should let the Europeans do the grunt
work, learn their lessons, then leave them in the dust :)
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