Ada Test & Measurement Program Development for Instrumentation

["Robert C. Leif, Ph.D." <rleif@MAIL.CTS.COM>]

To: San Diego SigAda and other Interested parties

Date: Saturday  26 October, 1996

Subject: 21 November, 1996 Thursday San Diego ACM SigAda Meeting

Speaker: William Whitaker, Ph.D., Colonel US Air Force Retired

This Month's Feature Presentation: IEEE Standards Project P1446 (Ada Test &
Measurement Program Development for Instrumentation)

IEEE Standards Project P1446 (Ada Test Program Development) is an on-going
effort to upgrade existing trial-use IEEE Standards 1226.1 and 1226.2
(1993).  These provide an Ada representation of a system for automatic test
consistent with the test language ATLAS IEEE Std 716 ("an Ada binding of
C/ATLAS").  The upgrade is to produce a full-use standard with facilities of
Ada 95 and ATLAS 95.

ATLAS is an IEEE Standard Test Language for All Systems! Since the 1960's it
has been in use for field maintenance of avionics for the military and for
commercial airlines. Initially a test description language, it has been
automated to provide for automatic test programs.  However, it is 60's
technology as far as the computer portion, FORTRAN-level. It has not been
much used outside of the avionics world.

In 1989 the IEEE established a project (then called ATLAS/Ada Based
Environment for Text - ABET) to provide an Ada realization of ATLAS and
related test standards.  The initial result of this was a trial-use IEEE Std
1226.  The components 1226.1 and 1226.2 being the ATLAS-level portion, based
on ATLAS 89 and Ada 83, were published in 1993.

A new number, P1446, was assigned for the upgrade to full-use and ATLAS 95
and Ada 95 levels.

ATLAS is a language for avionics unit testing.  It has verbs to SETUP,
CONNECT, ARM, APPLY, MONITOR, etc.  It has "modifiers" of VOLTAGE, CURRENT,
PRESSURE, TORQUE, TEMPERATURE, etc. It currently has nouns like AC_SIGNAL,
VIBRATION, and PULSED_DOPPLER, on to VOR and TACAN.  It deals with analog
and digital signals, input and monitored.  These could be extended to other
applications areas, medical instrumentation, automotive, laser, etc. One of
the goals of the P1446 upgrade is to make it easy to provide and implement
such extensions, and allow them to take advantage of a larger test environment.

The computer portion of P1446 has a number of test-related features that
should have wider application.  It has addressed several I/O matters that
answer common requirements and may deserve consideration simply because they
have been standardized.

The project is being run over the Web and may be visited at
http://www.erols.com/whitaker/p1446.htm

The current state of the formal document is a Draft 1.0 which is an edited
combination of the existing trial-use standards. The working version Draft
2.0 is fragmentary.  The 1226.1 upgrade, the computer and I/O portion of the
standard is fairly complete. The 1226.2, ATLAS test facilities portion, is
not yet there.

In addition there is a parallel Rationale document containing some
non-standards information in support of the decisions that went into the
draft of the standard, and a formal set of Issues, all the stuff that you
would expect for an Ada effort.

This is also implementation and code testing code which may be useful in
evaluating the standard, but will not be part of it.

Technical input and participation is invited worldwide from all who wish to
contribute, IEEE members or not.
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Col. William Whitaker has a PhD in Physics from the University of Chicago.
He retired 10 years ago after serving 30 years in the US Air Force, where
most of his hands-on experience was with nuclear, conventional, and
unconventional weapons, and the computers that design and service them.

He was in charge of the DoD project that resulted in Ada language.

He has been involved with the IEEE Standards Coordinating Committee on
Automatic Testing, SCC20, for 20 years and is the co-Chair of their IEEE
P1446 Ada Test Program Development standards project.

In other efforts in standard languages, he was a member of the ANSI/ISO
committee that produced SGML and has recently produced an interactive
computer dictionary for Latin.
See http://www.erols.com/whitaker/words.htm
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Time: 6:30 PM

Lecture Starts promptly at 7:00 PM

Date: 21 November, 1996 Thursday

Place: Thompson Software Products, which is located at 10251 Vista Sorrento
Parkway, Suite #300, San Diego, CA  92121-2706.
Duration: About 1 hour.

Please RSVP Robert C. Leif,  if you wish to join the preprogram pizza meal
($5.00 per person).

RSVP Tel. & Fax  Robert C. Leif (San Diego ACM SIGAda Vice Chair)
(619) 582-0437 (Voice and FAX), e-mail rleif@mail.cts.com (Robert C. Leif,
Ph.D.).  Please include the number of individuals desiring pizza, any
special requirements,  your name, telephone number and/or e-mail number when
responding by telephone, Fax, or E-mail. Please Include the Words Pizza or
SigAda in the Subject line of your e-mail. Robert C. Leif  will be on travel
from 12 to 20 November, 1996. For that period, if you have any questions,
problems, etc. please e-mail Rick Grunsky (Chair San Diego SigAda)
rgrunsky@electriciti.com(Rick Grunsky), or telephone him at (619) 578-0274.

Directions:

From 805 going North:  Take the Mira Mesa Blvd./Vista Sorrento Parkway
exit.  Stay on the left side of the exit ramp. After the traffic light at
Mira Mesa Blvd., go about 0.5 miles North West.  Thomson is on the right
hand side, 10251 Vista Sorrento Parkway.  You need to look for the Thomson
sign on the right.  It is located after a bend in the road. You need to be
careful not be going so quickly that you zoom past the driveway into
Thomson.  If you exit 805 going North in any of the right (North) lanes,
you will be forced to turn right onto Mira Mesa Blvd.

From 805 going South: Take the Mira Mesa Blvd./Sorrento Valley Road exit.
Turn left onto Mira Mesa Blvd.  Take the first left onto Vista Sorrento
Parkway (at the signal just beyond the freeway overpass).
Go about 0.5 miles North West.  Thomson is on the right hand side, 10251
Vista Sorrento Parkway.   You need to look for the Thomson sign on the
right.  It is located after a bend in the road. You need to be careful not
be going so quickly that you zoom past the driveway into Thomson.

If you are not on this distribution and wish to receive these announcements,
please send your e-mail address to rleif@mail.cts.com

If you are on this distribution and do not wish to continue to receive these
announcements, please notify Robert Leif at rleif@mail.cts.com. Inclusion of
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