Reuse Repositories (Was: Object Oriented Turing Demo on FTP)

[att!csn!news.den.mmc.com!muse!snorman@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU ( Stephen P. N orman )]

In article 5069@seas.gwu.edu, mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:
> In article <SRCTRAN.93Apr26205349@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Grego
ry Aharonian) writes:
> >   I hope the troughers at ASSET read this message and learned a good way
> >of publicizing reusable software over the Internet.  Shouldn't the ongoing
> >silence from ASSET on comp.lang.ada about what they do and what they have
> >grounds for firing or demoting someone?  I mean, when other languages have
> >a better promotion record on comp.lang.ada than people receiving tax
> >dollars to promote Ada reuse, there are serious problems.
> >
> I couldn't agree more. When will ASSET come out of its corner and start
> acting like it wants to promote what it does?

Never thought I would see this. Michael and Greg agreeing for once -:)

> 
> There's no need for ASSET folks to get in the middle of flame wars,
> but an occasional announcement of some of the good stuff available
> there might be helpful both to net readers and to ASSET.
> 
> Well.....? RU there?

They must be there, because one of the postings I made drew a call from
the one of the STARS Software Reuse Leads. Must say that this person was
sincerely interested in our experiences with reuse.

> 
> Mike Feldman
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Michael B. Feldman
> co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Now I will go out on a limb and add a few of my personal observations (opinions
)
to this thread concerning the government reuse initiatives:

* ASSET, DSRO, C2Store, STARS, CARDS, DISA, DSSA, PRISM, CASS, ARC, SIMTEL, etc
. seem to be reorganized all too often. We have a hard time staying up to date 
with who is where, 
who used to be what, and so forth. Was very convenient that at the 'Who's doing
 What in Reuse' pitch at the STARS 92 conference there were no handouts of the 
slides available.
Change is a fact of life, but let's adequately document what is going on.

* These DOD guys could use a lesson or two from the COSMIC guys, who in my
experience are light years ahead in the marketing realm. Yes, their approach is
 low
tech, but it works, and it is easy to use and easy to obtain. Every month I get
 an
e-mail from them saying what's new in the COSMIC realm. I can index this stuff 
into
WAIS and in an instant pretty much know if there is any software dealing with a
 particular topic I have in mind.

* On-line access mechanisms are not consistent are certainly not convenient. AS
SET et al
should be (and maybe are) looking at technologies like AFS (Transarc's Andrew F
ile System, DCE), WAIS, gopher, archie, and JANUS. CD-ROMS, gosh what a great i
dea. Why
should I telnet to somewhere, get 10 keystrokes a minute while navigating some 
complex search mechanism and all I find is a 5 year old X11R3 binding. Let's fa
ce it - there
aren't any domain specific reusable components that I know of out there - why e
xpend all the energy on sophisticated browsing mechanisms using expert systems 
and what not when most engineers can determine in a few minutes whether what is
 out there TODAY will work for them. A major problem is they can't find anythin
g if they wanted to, and until MIL-STD-SDD comes along they have no incentive t
o look for anything anyways (much less develop for reuse). Most DOD programs th
at I know of are behind the closed do




ors (i.e. classified, no network access), so something like a CD-ROM sure would
 be convenient. You could put the browsing mechanism on the disk along with the
 libraries contents. 

Well, I'll get off the soapbox. Hope I have not -:('d too much.

Steve Norman
Software Reuse Group
Martin Marietta Astronautics
PO Box 179
Denver CO 80201

snorman@den.mmc.com