Regarding Microtec

Regarding Microtec

[Rakesh Malhotra]

Dear Editor

I read the article "Real-time software world raises reliability bar"
(Feb 16,1998 - Terry Costlow) with interest.  I work in the embedded,
real-time, safety critical market and so the article applies to my work.

One thing interesting (and disappointing to me) in the article is the
lack of any mention of Ada at all.  The article discusses safety and
certified RTOS's.  Well, a large number of safety critical systems are
done in Ada and Ada includes tasking as part of its language
definition.  Hence an Ada compiler, as part of its run-time environment,
also includes an "OS".  And to the best of my knowledge the run-times
sold by some Ada compiler vendors have been certified by the FAA for
quite some time.  In fact,in 1992 we used the Alsys Ada compiler (now
Aonix) and they had a run-time called C-SMART (for Certified-Small Ada
Runtime) which was FAA certified.  Other Ada vendors may also have this
certification (e.g. DDC-I).

So, while Microtec getting FAA certification for their RTOS is certainly
interesting,  they are by no means first.   Also some international
standards (e.g. CENELEC ENV 50129) for safety systems recommend the use
of Ada as opposed to C or other languages.  Additionally, Ada is
probably the only language that actually addresses safety as part of its
language design - see Annex H in the Ada language reference manual.  

Hence, based on the above, I would have expected to have found some
mention of Ada in the article.

As an aside: I do not know if this is an EE Times policy but I do not
normally find mention of Ada based projects in your pages.  There is a
lot of mention of C, C++, Embedded C++ and Java.   Ada is certainly used
in many non-trivial application areas, embedded and otherwise, including
many applications where high reliabilty and quality is required.  Please
have a look at www.adahome.com for a list of applications that are done
in Ada.

Thankyou.
--
Rakesh Malhotra.

Stanley Allen wrote:

>In EETimes this week (Feb 16, 1998) there is an article called
>"Real-time software raises the reliability bar".  This article
>talks about Microtec's new RTOS which has received the FAA's
>RTCA/DO-178B Level A certification for mission-critical
>aerospace systems.

>Does anyone know if there are Ada compilers for this
>RTOS?  I know that some Ada compilers and run-time systems
>have achieved DO-178 cert. in the past.

>Microtec is the company that either bought or used to be
>Ready Systems, which developed the VRTX executive for
>which there were Ada 83 compilers.

-- 
Stanley Allen

Re: Regarding Microtec

[Stanley R. Allen]

Rakesh Malhotra wrote:
> 
> Dear Editor
> 
> One thing interesting (and disappointing to me) in the article is the
> lack of any mention of Ada at all. 

I've noticed that most information about Ada in EETimes is
generally written by someone with no knowledge of the
language.  The last article I remember about Ada in EETimes
was called "Ada finds new life riding a Java wave" -- 
describing the Ada-to-JVM translation technology.  It
was such a sloppy job I was surprised that no one
complained; also, as you can tell by the article title,
the assumption was generally that Ada was/is "dead".

This is a common assumption in the pop computer
literature.  Case in point, the latest issue of RTC
magazine (Feb 1998), pg 93 has a notice announcing the
recent validation of the new Green Hills Ada compilers,
prefixed with the slightly astonished observation that
"ADA [sic] still takes its share of high reliability
software projects."

> As an aside: I do not know if this is an EE Times policy but I do not
> normally find mention of Ada based projects in your pages.  There is a
> lot of mention of C, C++, Embedded C++ and Java.

Y'know, the funny thing is that in practically every
issue of EETimes there are a number of Ada employment
opportunities advertised in the back pages.  Apparently
employers know they can reach Ada developers through
EETimes.

A lot of the articles you see in these kind of
magazines are written by people trying to sell the
products being described in the articles and sold on
the opposite page.  If Ada vendors advertised in these
rags, the editors would welcome articles written by
Ada vendors.

Another way to get articles into magazines like this
is to submit them yourself.  Richard Riehle does this
kind of thing often, and has made a point of telling
others in the Ada community how easy it is to do.
Editors are always looking for interesting material,
and usually are facing an unforgiving deadline; a
half-way decent article describing an interesting
technology or project which uses Ada may be just the
thing to the editor needs to fill up a few proof
sheets for the next issue.

I like Richard Riehle's approach: just do it, and
assume that nothing should stand in your way.  I
hope to imitate him some day soon by writing the
first Ada article in Linux Journal, as long as one
of you out there doesn't (or hasn't) beat me to the
punch!

-- 
Stanley Allen
mailto:s_allen@hso.link.com

Re: Regarding Microtec

[JP Thornley]

In article: <6cuv9l$8vo$1@gte1.gte.net>  Rakesh Malhotra 
<rakesh.malhotra@safetran.com> writes:
> In fact,in 1992 we used the Alsys Ada compiler (now
> Aonix) and they had a run-time called C-SMART (for Certified-Small Ada
                                                     ^^^^^^^^^
> Runtime)

Only a small point, but the C stands for Certifiable - a certificate 
only ever applies to an overall system, of which the run-time is just 
one part.

It is called Certifiable because the vendor provides all the necessary 
evidence for the user to pass to the certification authorities.

(Once an IV&V man, always an IV&V man :-)

Phil Thornley

-- 
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| JP Thornley    EMail jpt@diphi.demon.co.uk                           |
|                      phil.thornley@acm.org                           |
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