Re: IDE/Rational Apex experiences

[TB <TB@pacbell.net>]

I've had quite a bit of experience using a collection of tools, and having an
in-house
guru write scripts to glue them all together. It became his full-time job. Any
change/upgrade of any of the tools required him to change/upgrade his work.
My feeling was that we should not be in the tools business. It's not our expertise,

and putting him back to the work we did do would essentially free his salary
toward integrated tools.  There are competitors to Rose but I have not found
one for Apex, certainly nothing to compare with Apex/Rose.  Having everything
integrated into one tool saves everyone time and money.

Don Harrison wrote:

> What we really need to know is (Ada95 specific) information on:
>
> a) What other credible IDEs are there for Ada95 on the SGI platform?
>
> b) How do they compare with Rational Apex/Rose in terms of:
>
>    - Quality of the Ada tools (compiler, linker, debugger etc.)
>    - Quality of the supporting tools (CM, Version Control, Change Control,
>      documentation, OOAD, etc). How effective are they in helping to manage the
>      development process and in maximising productivity?
>    - Support for interfacing to C/C++.
>    - Support for Design by Contract.
>    - State-of-the-art? How dated are they?
>    - Cost.
>    - Any others you consider important.
>
> c) What collection of non-integrated (or partially integrated) tools, if any,
>    would you recommend for SGI in preference to an IDE and why? Please address
>    the issues listed under b).