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From: Al Christians <achrist@easystreet.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Market pressures for more reliable software
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 14:32:04 -0700
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Date: 2001-06-25T14:32:04-07:00
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Wes Groleau wrote:
> 
> > Not until we moved up to a 360, was there any semblance of
> > "centralization," and this was mainly for scheduling purposes.  We still
> > did our own keypunching, and ran our own jobs.
> 
> While I was in high school, "OTIS" was introduced:
> the "Oregon Total Information System"  This was a 360
> that contained ALL public school grade records for the
> whole state.  How's that for centralization?
> 
> At the same time, my algebra teacher's husband had
> full control of a PDP-8 (eight-bit computer bigger
> than a file cabinet!) in his nuclear physics lab.
> 

These things live forever.  I think that OTIS still lives.
It's not run statewide anymore, but it is run by school
districts and extended school districts covering large
areas but not many kids.  I think that the commercial 
group that was supporting OTIS has just closed up, though,
and that the districts are picking up newer alternatives.

That ought to be a good market for Ada.  OTIS demonstrates
that these systems have a very long lifecycle, which is 
what Ada was designed for.  There is also some need for
reliability.  Note that about 10,000 kids in New York went
to summer school on account of a computer error in scoring
tests, and some principals have had their careers suffer on 
account of school software errors.  And then there are all
the security worries about kids trying to hack into everything. 

Anyone know if there are any competitors in that market that
make it an unattractive proposition for product development?


Al