Re: SigAda summary

[jpwoodruff@irisinternet.net (John Woodruff)]

chrismiller677@hotmail.com (Chris Miller) wrote in message news:<1241654d.0212132140.7fb3f71e@posting.google.com>...
> Is there anyone who was at the SigAda conference who would care to
> post a summary of anything interesting that was discussed ?.

Here are some of the items that interested me:

SigAda Chair Currie Colket reports that there are 560 members in the
SigAda interest group.  Attendance at the conference was just under
100.  Proceedings of the conference will be issued to SigAda members
in CD form.

Keynote speaker Robert Dewar described the license that Ada Core
Technology (ACT) uses to release public versions of their compiler
product.  The license allows applications to use their runtime but
never obligates a developer to release any product. ACT (the company)
is steadily growing and makes a growing profit.

Bob Carey of Lawrence Livermore National Lab described the on-going
work on the controls software to operate the National Ignition
Facility laser.  NIF is a very large high-power laser that will focus
1.8 MegaJoules of energy on a target in a 25 nanosecond pulse to study
nuclear fusion. The controls, written in Ada and Java, now comprise
some 600 KSLOCs; initial integration testing is presently in progress.
(I am a co-author of the report and a long-term coworker on NIF).

Rick Conn described the C-130J aircraft software.  Lockheed has
invested $1.2 billion in the software product: about 5 MSLOC's of Ada
in about 50 CSCI's.  Their goal is to enhance customizability of the
aircraft for a variety of customers.

Charles McKay, dean of the school of Science & Engineering of the
University of Houston spoke in favor of yet-more-rigorous definitions
of Ada and the systems engineering process in advance of mission and
safety critical applications.  He favors resuming work on a
programming support environment (PSE) to capture all the development
processes for safety-critical systems.

Martin Carlisle (USAF Academy) told about his revisions to gnat to
incorporate the Microsoft .NET paradigm (ability to distribute
portable multi-language binary modules).

Tucker Taft outlined early plans for the next Ada language standard
revision (Ada-0Y). The schedule calls for proposals to be complete
early in 2003, the proposed text of the revision to be completed in
spring 2005 and voting to be complete at the end of 2005.

Topics for probable revision
� Interface inheritance (ala Java)
� Solve cyclic dependencies among types
� Pragma to declare intention to override (or avoid
overriding)primitive  operation in child package
� Standardize pragma Assert (leading to design-by-contact).
� Possible syntax for prefix notation on object instances (like C++
Object.Op (params) notation.
� Several issues for safety and security enhancements.

-- John