Re: Pro*Ada

[hoodt@postoffice.manassas.ibm.com (Thomas Hood 913-4501)]

In article <rgh.783019527@camo>, Richard G. Hash <rgh@shell.com> writes:
|> > >Some time ago an Oracle employee wrote to me that Oracle hardly ever
|> > >receives feedback from the Ada community, and therefore he suspected
|> > >the Ada community to be a 'self-sufficient lot'. 
|> > 
|> > Without going into details, I can assure you that we've used Pro*Ada
|> > and we've provided _substantial_ feedback to Oracle Corporation.
|> 
|> Well our latest beauty with Pro*Ada is that recently we tried to move
|> from Verdix 6.1.0(e) to Verdix 6.2.1(e) for AIX, and lo-and-behold, there
|> were problems...  So we called Oracle and got this reply: they *do*
|> support 6.2.1, but "only for the Government". If you are willing to pay
|> for a special support agreement then you can get it too (you can
|> call Carol Estridge to inquire about the cost).

Well, I think we're "the Government" being referred to here.  They asked
us to draft a business case for supporting back levels of their
environment before they would "fix" the problem.  In their eyes, the
fact that Verdix changed how records are physically represented in
6.2.1(e) didn't constitute a bug in their (Oracle's) code.  BTW, they
considered Oracle 7.0.x to be "back levels" since 7.1.3 would be out
Real Soon Now(tm).  A few phone calls from Marketing got them straight.
The upshot is if you want Pro*Ada to work with Verdix 6.2.1(~) then
get Oracle 7.1.3 and the new version of Pro*Ada with it.

|> 
|> In the past they have tracked new compilers releases pretty well.
|> Given the level of money Shell companies pour into Oracle every
|> year, I just couldn't believe this. Not a good sign.
|> 
|> --
|> Richard G. Hash                                      email: rgh@shell.com
|> Shell Development Company, Bellaire Research Center  phone: (713) 245-7311
|> Member Team Ada                Free Ada94 compilers: cs.nyu.edu:/pub/gnat

-- 

Thomas Hood
hoodt@lfs.loral.com
-- Ada grunt since 1985
-- Member Team Ada since 1994
-- Member Team Human since 1965
--
-- My opinions are not those of my employers, and if they were I'd probably
-- reject them out of hand and form new ones.