Ada news from ACM

Ada news from ACM

[Kenneth Mays]

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Recent events and news about Ada related topics thanks to ACM SigAda
ported to comp.lang.ada for your viewing.

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Ada Education up 25% Last Year

Version 8.0 of the CREASE (Catalog of Resources for Education in Ada 
and Software Engineering) has recently been completed and will be 
released in January 1996. The CREASE offers detailed information 
about 599 Ada courses offered by 323 institutions throughout the 
world. It also provides information about available Ada books and 
videotapes, computer-aided instruction and free educational resources.

According to the data collected, the number of available Ada courses 
has grown by 25%, and the number of institutions offering Ada 
training has grown by 26% since the release of version 7 last year. 
Of the courses, nearly 15% have already moved up to Ada 95.

To obtain a hard copy of the entire CREASE, please contact the AdaIC 
at 1-800/AdaIC-11.


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Use of Ada in Germany

On December 13, 1995, Ralf Fachet of Thomson Software Products German 
Division posted a note to comp.lang.ada noting the state of Ada usage 
in Germany: 

I do not agree with you for the German market where we are on of the 
major Ada Compiler vendor.

In our country we have done this year the best Ada sales. Our 
statistics told us the we have done over 60% of our business outside 
the Mandated world. 

Ralf Fachet
Sales Department
Thomson Software Products
Kleinoberfeld 7
D-76135 Karlsruhe
phone +49(+721)98653-23
fax +49(+721)98653-98
mobil +49(+172)6702627
private +49(+7247)85726 (fax/phone)
email fachet@thomsoft.de




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Use of Ada in GPS

There is now a home page which describes the use of Ada software in 
many differnt Global Positioning System (GPS) components.


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Ada Core Technologies (ACT) Selected By Digital Equipment To Provide 
Ada 95 Solution For Digital's OpenVMS Alpha Platform

Ada Core Technologies (ACT) and Digital Equipment Corporation 
announced today a partnership for ACT to provide an OpenVMS Alpha 
solution for Ada 95. Under the agreement, ACT will port GNAT to the 
OpenVMS Alpha platform and enhance it with digital-specific bindings. 
Availability is expected by the summer of 1996.

Under the terms of the agreement, ACT will make available a fully 
functional, validated GNAT for OpenVMS Alpha. ACT will offer full 
support for this product, as it does for other GNAT targets.

Contacts:
Robert Dewar 
Ada Core Technologies 
(212) 620-7300 (Ext 100) 
E-mail dewar@gnat.com 

Judith Abrahamovich
Digital Equipment Corporation
(508) 493-5660
E-mail judith@msbcs.enet.dec.com

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ACT and TLD Announce Strategic Alliance for Ada-95 Real-Time Products

Ada Core Technologies (ACT) and TLD Systems, Ltd announced today an 
agreement to join forces to produce high quality Ada 95 systems for 
real-time and embedded products.

Under the terms of the agreement, ACT will provide technical support 
and adaptation of the widely used GNAT Ada 95 technology, and TLD 
will adapt its cross-development tools for this environment. The two 
companies will work together to produce a run time system for optimal 
use in these environments.

Contacts: 
Robert Dewar 
Ada Core Technologies 
(212) 620-7300 (Ext 100) 
E-mail dewar@gnat.com 

Bob Risinger
TLD Systems, Ltd.
(310) 542-5433
E-mail tld@cerf.net

------------------------------------------------------------------------


ARA sponsored Ada Lovelace Programming Contest

The Ada contest seeks to recognize the most readable, original, 
reusable, and clear working Ada programs. Like the Ada programming 
language, the contest is named in honor of the first programmer in 
history, Lady Ada Lovelace.

This contest is open to all.

Every two months, the ARA will pay US$ 750 to the best Ada code 
segment submitted. Submissions must be received by the 15th 
(midnight) of the "contest month" and the award will be announced at 
the end of the second month. A submission is made by emailing the 
source code to

ara-contest@ocsystems.com

The first contest closes December 15th, 1995. (Thus contest months 
will be February, April, June, August, October, and December.)

On the 15th of the contest month an email message will be sent to the 
ARA mailing list indicating the FTP site from where those submissions 
may be downloaded. Submissions received after the 15th will be 
included in the next contest.

The criteria: 

1.May "with" previous winners, but is otherwise portable from 
compiler to compiler. The software may depend on a particular 
operating system or other commonly available software. 2.A good 
reusable component or elegant exposition 3.The copyright will be to 
the ARA with free use permitted. The original authors name, etc will 
be kept. 4.Unique 

A panel of independant judges will do the actual choosing and will 
use their own judgement to balance the criteria. Rather than 
micromanage the criteria, it is expected that the judges will use 
good reasoning to determine quality software. The judges may submit 
more specific direction to the ara mailing list for particular 
contests. Appropriate documentation and tests cases should be 
provided.

To an appropriate extent, the judges discussions will be carried on 
in a public forum, such as comp.lang.ada so that others may come to 
understand the judges reasoning. In this manner, the contest can be 
viewed as a teaching/learning tool. The judges may (at their 
discretion) request changes to a submission.

A non-winning submission may be submitted to the next bimonthly competition.

The ARA will maintain the rules and a winners list on HBAP and 
winning entries on an ftp site. The idea here is to get a few high 
quality components and examples, rather than a large quantity of 
lesser reviewed components and examples.

The first contest closes December 15th, 1995.

The judges are Tucker Taft, Michael Feldman and Magnus Kempe. They 
may be sending additonal info to the ARA mailing list or comp.lang.ada

Questions about the contest may be directed to ara-contest@ocsystems.com

The ARA will maintain the rules and a list of winners on HBAP, and 
will store the winning entries on an FTP site. The purpose of that 
site is to accumulate a limited number of high quality components and 
examples, rather than a large quantity of low quality components and 
examples.


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A Mention of the Ada Programming Language in an Upcoming Movie!

Ada programmer and author Tom Strelich put a plug for the Ada 
language in the upcoming movie, Out There.


The movie will premire on Sunday, November 19, 1995 at 8:00 P.M.on 
the Showtime cable movie channel. The Ada mention is about 45 minutes 
into the movie. 

Tom has graciously made previews of the movie available. This 
includes the a description of the movie, a script segment for the Ada 
plug, some still photos, and a quicktime version of the segment.

Don't forget to watch!


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Ada as a Foundation Programming Language

Michael Feldman the Chair of the ACM SIGAda Education Working Group 
produced the following summary of the use of Ada at colleges and 
universitites: 

This summarizes the colleges and universities known -- or at least 
credibly believed -- to have adopted Ada as a "foundation language," 
at CS1, CS2, or CS7 level in their computer science (or similar) 
curricula. I choose to keep track of precisely these courses because 
they are taken by students in either first or second year, and thus 
early enough to serve as a foundation upon which to build a large 
portion of the undergraduate software curriculum.

This data is, for the most part, verifiable, based on first-hand 
reports from the teachers of those courses. In a few cases, 
publishers' textbook adoption data was used. I would like to keep 
this list as complete and up to date as possible, so please let me 
know of any additions or corrections. If your department has firm 
plans to switch to Ada in the 1996-97 academic year, I can add it to 
the list with a note to that effect.



The trend information since 1991, when I first started keeping track 
of this information:


Year 	Number of Institutions Introducing Ada in CS1 	Number of 
Institutions Introducing Ada in CS2/7 		Total 
1991	20	20		40
1992	30	27		57
1993	52	33		85
1994	63	37		100
1995	92	40		132


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Update to IEEE Std 990

Jim Moore <moorej@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us> is leading an effort to 
update IEEE Std 990, Recommended Practice on PDL/Ada.

The Recommended Practice was originally completed in 1987 and 
subsequently reaffirmed in 1992. According to IEEE CS procedures, it 
is again due for reconsideration in 1997. The recent approval of the 
Ada 95 standard, though, suggests that the Recommended Practice might 
be a candidate for revision in order to exploit many of the important 
principles of the language revision.

Anyone wishing to participate in this effort should contact Jim directly.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


Possible Updates to Validation Policy

There is a revision of the Ada compiler validation policy being 
circulated for public comment. When finalized, it will be available 
on the AJPO host for reference and downloading.

Test suite 2.0 for ACVC is currently in use Approximately 280 of the 
3,406 tests have been withdrawn through the formal challenge process.

An interim release (2.0.1) is planned for pre-release in December 
1995 and official release in March 1996 that will include corrections 
to some of the tests that were withdrawn because of errors.

ACVC 2.1 should include about 360 additional Ada 95 tests. The 
schedule calls for an unfrozen pre-release in March 1996, frozen 
pre-release in September 1996, and official use beginning in March 
1997.

Test suite use: 

ACVC 1.11 

in use until March 1997 

ACVC 2.0 

in use from 31 March 1995 until 31 March 1996 passing requires 
passing all applicableAda9X basic tests 

ACVC 2.0.1 

in use from 31 March 1996 until 31 March 1997 passing requires 
passing all applicable Ada9X basic tests and all of either the OOP 
tests or the real-time tests 

ACVC 2.1 

in use from 31 March 1997 on. Passing requires passing all applicable 
Core tests. 

All validation certificates expire 31 March 1998.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


Another Ada Success Story

The article "Universal Engine Controller" in the September Embedded 
Systems Programming looks like another Ada success story. It 
describes a Navy project to control ship engines.

Here are a few excerpts as summarized by Chris Daly:



"Ada has some real virtues for embedded applications"

"Ada was chosen as the implementation language, even though no one in 
the group at that time had much experience with it."

"I think the timely and succesful completion of this project was due 
in large part to the choice of Ada. It made the hardware interfacing 
very straightforward and allowed us to adapt the original prototype 
software to a new hardware platform with relative ease."




------------------------------------------------------------------------


Satisfaction with CS1 languages

John W. McCormick of State University of New York, Plattsburgh, 
summarized the following information: 

The latest issue (Sept 95) of the SIGCSE Bulletin contains an article 
by Suzanne Pawlan Levy on satisfaction with languages used in CS1 
(the first course in computer science). She sent surveys to all 139 
schools listed in the Reid report as not using Pascal in CS1. 33% of 
the schools responded. Of the 57 responses, 16 used Ada, 18 used C, 7 
used C++, 6 used Scheme, and 10 used other languages.

She asked instructors to compare their language to Pascal for a 
variety of constructs (parameter passing, strings, support of 
software engineering, etc.). 

Her final survey question asked whether an instructor considers the 
language he/she is currently using to be the best language for the 
CS1 course. The results are:



Ada 81% Scheme 66% C 29% C++ 28% 


------------------------------------------------------------------------


New ATIP-P Program from AJPO

Here is the announcement about the AJPO's Ada Technology Insertion 
Partnership Program. It appeared in the Commerce Business Daily on 
9/18/95 
------------------------------------------------------------------------


Experiences Using Ada by a German Company

Alan E. Brain posted the following relating his experinces using Ada.



I'm finishing working for a major German software Company (actually 
the Australian branch thereof). I have been Ada ing since it was 
Green.

Examples: 3 projects: First is a Submarine combat system. Second a 
Surface Combat system. Third an AAW (Anti-Air Warfare) system grafted 
on to number 2.

Project 1 was a bit of a disaster. Literally hundreds of C and 
Assembler hackers given 2 weeks training in Ada, then turned loose. 
Cost and schedule over-runs, the works. Yet despite the disaster, and 
costing probably 10 times what it could have, was deemed a success in 
comparison with conventional techniques. To quote I Ching "No Praise, 
No Blame".

Project 2 was estimated at 20 man years by the standard techniques. 
All newbies on this one, we didn't have to re-train them, they knew 
that they knew not, so were amenable to such procedures as Peer 
Review, OOD, Information hiding, encapsulation, data typing and all 
that CMM stuff. It took 1.6 man years, was delivered on time, under 
budget.

Project 3 delivered 8,000 SLOCs in 3 months, no Cat 3 PTRs after 
first 3 weeks of testing. No cat 1 or 2 PTRs at all. Used Chief 
Programmer approach, 6 man months total. NASA metric predicted 39+ 
Those are the measured figures. FWIW. 





New Ada Interface to SQL

The ANSI committee responsible for SQL standards maintenance, X3H2, 
has approved a revision to the interface for Ada. The new interface 
uses the Ada's decimal data type to support SQL's NUMERIC data. This 
is a major step in Ada for Information Systems.

Also included in the new interface is support for variable length 
strings and international character sets. Ada's abstraction features 
are used to advantage. The support for variable length strings is 
modeled on Ada.Strings.

The new interface now goes to the international level (ISO/SC21/WG3) 
for approval as part of the Technical Corrigendum process. The new 
interface, if approved, will be part of TC-2, to be finalized at the 
next meeting of the WG3 DBL RG (see note) the week of 16 July. Use of 
the TC process greatly accelerates the approval cycle.

A copy of the new interface is available for anonymous ftp at 
ftp.sei.cmu.edu as pub/marc/AdaSQL.ps 
------------------------------------------------------------------------


New Ada 95 OOP Column In JOOP

GooStarting with the July/August 1995 issue, the Journal of 
Object-Oriented Programming will include a column on Ada in each 
issue, written by Richard Riehle. 
------------------------------------------------------------------------


Two Articles from EE Times Talk Favorably about Ada

An online mailing list has made available two articles from EE Times 
which talk very favorably about Ada and Ada 95. The first is on 
Object-Oriented Languages and the second is on Ada 95.


------------------------------------------------------------------------


Job Outlook Good For Those With Ada Expertise



Highly specialized software engineers are considered hot commodities 
to aerospace companies and their outsourcing providers, according to 
a recent article in Computerworld.

It seems in the aerospace industry, highly specialized means an 
expert knowledge of Ada. James Diller, administrator of professional 
employment at the McDonnell Douglas Corp. commented, "Even though 
we've had some layoffs, we're always hiring for particular skills. 
Specifically, programmers with Ada, C and C++ expertise are in the 
highest demand ..."

According to Computerworld, internships [which serve as a means of 
learning Ada] are becoming increasingly available. For example, 
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., offers 
four-year programs for undergraduates that include two internships as 
well as course work in Ada, C and Unix. 



Source:
Scanlon, Bryan and Amy Bermar. "Jobs in Space." Computerworld, 5 June 
1995: 107.

Point of Contact:
Computerworld - 508/879-0700 or for reprints, contact Sharon Bryant - 
508/820-8125


------------------------------------------------------------------------


Object Application Awards Program Invites Entries 

Awards designed to showcase the best of custom applications using 
object-oriented approaches

Kronberg, TS. -- January 28, 1995 -- Object Management Group, 
co-sponsor of Object World Frankfurt, is seeking submissions for The 
Second Annual Object Application Awards.

Winners will be announced at Object World Frankfurt - The Software 
Event for Central Europe- on October 10, 1995. Chris Stone President 
and CEO of the Object Management Group will be the master of 
ceremonies.

The awards will showcase innovative custom applications using object 
technology. Applications must be currently in use, not for resale, 
and must meet one of the following qualifications:



�An application built from scratch �A modification of an 
off-the-shelf application �An object-oriented front end for a host 
application 

All entries must be postmarked by midnight, August 10, 1995. A panel 
of judges chiared by Prof. Roberto Zicari, OMG Central Europe, will 
select three finalists from each of the following five categories:



�Best distributed application using object technology with legacy 
systems �Best application utilizing reusable components leveraged 
from or for use in other projects �Best object-based application 
developed using object oriented and non-object oriented tools �Best 
application demonstrating the costs/benefits of using object 
technology �Best use of object technology within an enterprise or 
large systems environment 

Finalists will be notified the week of September 20, 1995 and must 
have at least one company representative present at Object World 
Frankfurt on October 10, 1995.

All entrants are required to complete an official entry kit. Entry 
kits can be obtained by contacting:



Christiane Sattler 
The Object Application Awards
c/o Object Management Group
Frankfurter Str. 15,
D-61476 Kronberg (Ts), Germany
Tel: +49-6173-2852
Fax: +49-6173-940420




------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oliver E. Cole of OC Systems, Inc. posted the following note on Ada 
95 Upward compatability on the comp.lang.ada newsgroup: 

Here is an interesting tidbit about the compatability of Ada83 and Ada95.

The OCS products are written in Ada. We recently bootstrapped our 
product line in Ada95.

There were no incompatabilities except in some packages where we 
implemented the new Ada95 constructs in our compiler. We had used 
some Ada95 reserved words while implementing the Ada95 constructs!! 
This was very simple to fix, but there is a lesson here somewhere 
(although I am not sure what it is).

Anyway, there was no pain going from Ada83 to Ada95 and we have lots 
of code. Quit worrying.




------------------------------------------------------------------------
A note from ACM SIGAda Vice-Chair for Meetings, Charlene Hayden, is 
now available. The note summarizes the results of the SIGAda Ada 
Awareness Campaign's latest outreach effort - a Booth at Object World 
in Boston, MA.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
In October 1994 IEEE Portable Applications Standards Committee 
received approval from PASC to form a working group to define an Ada 
binding to XTI; in January 1995, the IEEE PASC received approval for 
an Ada binding to Sockets. These interfaces will provide the same 
functionality as the C interfaces, but will incorporate 
encapsulation, information hiding, and other features available in 
Ada. More detailed information is available.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
The SIGAda Numerics Working Group (NUMWG) has produced two new 
international standards, as well as two additional draft 
international standards related to Ada numerics.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cool demonstration by SGI of an Ada 95 program interoperating with a 
C++ program. This demonstration occurred at TRI-Ada 94 in Baltimore. 
A copy of the netnews article by Tom Quiggle of SGI describing the 
software is available.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
A copy of the memo by ASD(C3I) Emmet Paige authorizing early use of 
Ada 95 is available.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following press release was based on a short article appearing in 
PC Week in December 1994:




 SUBJECT:  SUBTRACT C, ADD ADA/ RESULTS MULTIPLY
 SOURCE:   ZiffWire via Fulfillment by INDIVIDUAL, Inc.
 DATE:     December 13, 1994
 INDEX:    [1]
 ORDER NO: 404094#

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
PC Week via INDIVIDUAL, Inc. : Few managers can afford to do a software
project several times, using teams with similar experience but
different programming tools, to see if anything yields consistent
improvements in speed or quality of work. At the State University of
New York, Plattsburgh, though, Professor John McCormick has assigned
the same project to each of his classes for about nine years, but
switched languages at mid-decade.

Working in teams of three or four, McCormick's real-time-programming
students must write 15,000 lines of code to control a system that would
need about 150 switches to operate using hardware alone. In the five
years students used C, no team completed the project -- even when more
than half of the code was provided. With Ada, however, half of the
teams completed the project before any support code had even been
written. With some support code now provided, three out of four teams
finish the project.

Specific factors in this improvement, according to McCormick, include
both syntax and semantics. Ada leaves less room for single-keystroke
errors, such as the common C error of using = (assignment) instead of
== (comparison); its type-abstraction facilities reduce the need for
error- prone pointer manipulation; and its modular facilities improve
teams' coordination of effort.

This experience, McCormick notes, "has convinced all my faculty
colleagues to support teaching Ada in our beginning courses. This
spring semester, the first students with Ada as their mother tongue
will enroll in my course. I can only imagine what these teams will
accomplish." -- P.C.



A copy of the longer article by John McCormick that was orignally 
posted to Compuserve in response to Peter Coffee's query is 
available. 

Re: Ada news from ACM

[Ted Dennison]

Kenneth Mays wrote:
> 
> Recent events and news about Ada related topics thanks to ACM SigAda
> ported to comp.lang.ada for your viewing.
> 
> Ada programmer and author Tom Strelich put a plug for the Ada
> language in the upcoming movie, Out There.
> 
> The movie will premire on Sunday, November 19, 1995 at 8:00 P.M.on
> the Showtime cable movie channel. The Ada mention is about 45 minutes
> into the movie.


This note is of course a little late. However, I did happen to notice
the Ada mention. I was watching one of those low-budget made-for-cable 
movies late at night, and out of nowhere comes this Ada reference! You
could have knocked me over with a feather.

Of course I don't think it helped much that the character who made the
positive mention of Ada lived in a trailer park and never said more than
two sentences without mentioning UFO's or space aliens. Quite nearly a
backhanded compliment.

-- 
T.E.D.          
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