Re: Crosstalk Article from Aonix

[Colin Paul Gloster <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org>]

Richard Riehle posted on Fri, 10 Feb 2006 08:28:40 GMT on 
news:comp.lang.ada :
"In a recent article about safety-critical software, the author,
an employee of Aonix, manages to avoid even one mention
of  Ada."

Ada is actually mentioned once on
WWW.STSC.Hill.Af.mil/crosstalk/2006/02/0602Nilsen.html
in the "About the Author" section.

"  He seems to be unaware that, in the safety-critical
domain, Ada is still a much better option than Java.  In this
kind of article one would expect at least a token nod
in the direction of Ada from an Aonix author . C and C++
are mentioned often. This is a rather glaring considering that
Aonix was once an important player in the world of Ada."

The article was highly marketing driven and contains a number of 
inconsistent double standards to write favorably about the proposed 
safety-critical specification for Java or standard (i.e. actual) Java and 
to denigrate C or C++ or the specification called the Real-Time 
Specification for Java (and does not even admit the issue of 
incompatiblity of different real time specifications using the gimmick of 
having "Java" in their title (e.g. R.A.V.E.N.S.C.A.R. Java (the statement 
"Ravenscar[ Java, not the original so-called Reliable Ada Verifiable 
Executive Needed for Scheduling Critical Applications in Realtime which 
was designed to be amenable to analysis] falls short in that it does not 
offer a model that can be statically checked," from Tian Zhao; James 
Noble; Jan Vitek, "Scoped Types for Realtime Java", 
http://jiangxi.cs.uwm.edu/publication/drafts/scoped04.pdf is amusing); 
Kelvin Nilsen's (and his Real-Time Working Group's and the defunct 
J-Consortium's) Real-Time Core Extension; and the J-Consortium's surviving 
rival the Real-Time for Java Expert Group's Real-Time Specification for 
Java (and in the non-realtime domain: Javascript which also used the 
letters "Java" without actually being Java)).

"The Aonix web site, to be fair, does continue to feature their
Ada products. [..]"

However, neither Aonix nor RTSJ JVM vendor aicas seem to list the other as 
a partner now unlike in the past, but a tangential reference to aicas can 
still be found in a press release on Aonix's websites dated October 13, 
2004.

Maybe Aonix and aicas still cooperate, judging from an article in "EE 
Times": "Java breaks out: Brewing enhancements, OEMs target security, 
speed and ease of programming" by David Lammers.

On Fri, 10 Feb 2006, Jean-Pierre FAUCHE wrote:

"Aonix is not going away from Ada! We just released our new 8.2 version of our
flagship product ObjectAda, available on many platforms. We are offering ADT,
the new Ada plug-in into Eclipse. Our Raven offering is still one of the
favorite Ada solutions for safety-critical applications.
It is true that Java is a new business for us, but Ada is still an important
part of our core business.
The rest is marketing ;-)"

Java is not a new business for Aonix. The first paper on a realtime 
language which was purported to be Java was by Kelvin Nilsen in 1995 
before he founded his Real-Time Working Group; before Real-Time Working 
Group's J-Consortium was founded; and before the extant Real-Time for Java 
Expert Group of Sun's was founded.