Ada NEWS -- Week Ending 21 Oct 1994

Ada NEWS -- Week Ending 21 Oct 1994

[Ada Information Clearinghouse]

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DISA CENTER TO STAKE OUT ROLE FOR EXCELLENCE 
IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
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DATELINE:  October 21, 1994

     According to the Oct. 17 issue of Government Computer News,
plans are underway to transform the Defense Information Systems
Agency's (DISA's) Center for Information Management (CIM) into a
center of software excellence.

     The CIM currently oversees DoD's data-administration program,
software-reuse initiative, and the Ada Joint Program Office.

     While no public announcement has been made, GCN said the shift
was hinted at in recent remarks by DISA Director Lt Gen Albert
Edmonds.  Edmonds said he wanted a DISA project to prove the
benefits of Ada and sound software engineering in building
software.

[Source: "News Roundup", Government Computer News, Oct. 17, 1994]

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ARMY MISSILE COMMAND USING GNAT IN Ada 9X PIONEER PROTOTYPE
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DATELINE:  October 21, 1994

     Government Computer News has reported that the Army expects by
December to have developed a prototype application for it
Sustaining Base Information Services (SBIS).  The effort is using
early Ada 9X compilers and tools, and is taking place at the Army
Missile Command's Corporate Information Center Technology
Development Laboratory at Redstone Arsenal, Ala.

     The prototype is to provide directors of information
management with a graphical representation of their
information-technology inventory -- giving locations, and specific
users.  It will run on an IBM Corp. RS/6000 supplied by Loral
Federal Systems Group.

     The Missile Command Lab will use the GNU Ada Translator (GNAT)
Ada 9X compiler, developed at New York University, and widely
distributed at no charge to the public over the Internet.  The lab
has begun evaluating some development tools, such as those from
Rational, but has not yet reached a decision on what tools might be
available and useful for the project.

     Once the prototype is delivered, the SBIS team and SBIS
contractor Loral will review the lab's approach and determine
whether they can adopt the development technology.

     The prototype application is intended to be part of the
Infrastructure Computer Aided Design and Drafting System (ICADDS). 
This will be one of eight modules in the Director of Information
Management MIS (DOIMMIS) -- which will provide automated tools to
directors of information management worldwide.  With the ICADDS
applications, they will be able to view their entire installation
"down to the desktop".

[Source: Joyce Endoso, "Tryout of Ada 9X under way at Army Missile
Command", Government Computer News, Oct. 17, 1994]

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DEC AND RATIONAL TEAM UP TO MARKET Ada PRODUCTS
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DATELINE:  October 21, 1994

     DoD systems developers are going to be seeing the results of
two software-industry giants joining forces to bring Ada
software-engineering products to the market.

     The effort comes from a recent agreement between Rational
Software Corp. and Digital Equipment Corp.  Under the agreement,
Rational will be DEC's preferred supplier of Ada
software-development tools the DEC Alpha AXP workstations and
servers.  In turn, the AXP will be Rational's platform for future
development and enhancement of it Ada tools.

     Rational's new version of its Apex development environment
will be available first on the Alpha AXP OSF/1 platform, enhanced
for that architecture.

     Government Computer News reported industry sources as saying
that the DEC-Rational agreement will allow "both to remain
competitive because of the large installed base of DEC hardware and
Rational Ada development products."

[Source: Joyce Endoso, "Industry titans DEC and Rational join
forces to market Ada products", Government Computer News, Oct. 17,
1994]

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          THE AN/BSY-2 AND SEAWOLF-CLASS SUBMARINE ARE 
                     CREATING WAVES FOR Ada!
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DATELINE:  October 21, 1994

     The October issue of Defense Electronics has featured an Ada
success story entitled, "Going to Sea With Ada."  It documents the
advantages and lessons learned about the Ada programming language
in large embedded applications.  Martin Marietta Ocean, Radar and
Sensor Systems (OR&SS), (Syracuse, N.Y.), is developing a large
Ada-based Submarine Combat System (SCS), the AN/BSY-2 and a subset,
the AN/BQG-5, and believes that Ada is critical to the success of
large, extensive, embedded systems.

     The AN/BSY-2 SCS program began full scale development in 1988,
and when completed in 1995, will comprise 120 different computer
programs.  These programs will contain more than three million
lines of unique Ada code, with code reuse bringing the total
AN/BSY-2 software to nearly five million Source Lines of Code
(SLOC).  A subset of the AN/BSY-2 SCS is the AN/BQG-5 (WAA) sensor
system for the SSN 688 Seawolf-class submarine, which has been
delivered to the U.S. Navy and has successfully completed
performance evaluation.  The AN/BQG-5, totalling more than one
million SLOC, is operational, and is considered one of the best
passive sonar systems in the Navy's submarine force.

[Source:  Farnham, F. Gregory and Kevin J. McSweeney, "Going to Sea
With Ada," Defense Electronics, October 1994, Vol. 26, No. 10,
pp.25-28]

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              Ada COMPILER FOR WINDOWS NT AVAILABLE
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DATELINE:  October 21, 1994

     A complete compilation system for developing Ada applications
on standard PC platforms is now available. It is VADS for Windows
NT, the latest addition to the VADS family of compilers and
cross-compilers that run on a variety of open-systems host and
target platforms, offered by Rational Software Corporation.

     "VADS for Windows NT brings the power of a full UNIX-based Ada
development environment to the PC," said Ben Priest, marketing
manager at Rational.  "With VADS for Windows NT, developers can
take advantage of the increasing power of personal computers, while
using Ada to cope with complex software development for NT and
Win32. With our Win32 support, users can build reliable, high-
quality Ada applications that run under standard Windows 3.1."

For more information contact:
Rational Software Corporation
2800 San Tomas Expressway
Santa Clara, CA 95051-0951
Tel. (408) 496-3600 or (800) RAT-1212
Fax (408) 496-3636
E-mail product_info@rational.com

[Source:  Rational News Release, October 17, 1994]

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        NEW DDC-I 680x0 BOARD PORTS FOR Ada PRODUCT LINE
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DATELINE:  October 21, 1994

     DDC-I has announced its support for Motorola's MVME 162 and
MVME 167 boards, and Aitech Defense Systems' C740 board, the latest
in a series of DDC-I 680x0 board ports for their Ada product line.

     The MVME 162 and 167 series of embedded controllers allow the
systems designer to select a controller that suits his needs.  Both
are based on M68040 and offer optional ethernet, VME-bus and SCSI
interface.  The 162 series also offers Industry Pack Interface such
that custom hardware may be added to the system.  The boards are
available in various memory configurations.

     The C740 board from Aitech is also based on M68040 and
contains a MIL-STD 1553B interface which provides dual redundant
BC, RT and MT protocol logic, and an AMD 7990 ethernet controller. 

     Designed specifically for safety critical applications, the
DDC-I Ada Compiler System targeting MC68030 and MC68040 (DACS-
680x0) is validated in both basic and secure mode.  The protection
model has the objectives of controlling and restructuring task
interaction.  The standard protection given by the Ada language is
provided in basic mode, while the secure mode allows you to define
the rights and privileges of packages and tasks placed into
classes.  This allows applications to guarantee reliability by
disallowing operations which may be semantically correct, but would
compromise the security and operation of the application.