Re: Standard Library Interest?

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net>]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> Well, there's an excuse for having a provisional non-standard "standard" 
> by way of a Conventional Ada Library. You could create a database 
> interface - like possibly ODBC - and see what the reaction is. You could 
> add another interface and see if that got better reception. With some 
> experience under your belt, you look to the next Ada revision and 
> possibly declare a "winner" that gets incorporated into the ARM. The CAL 
> support for both still exists (unless there might be some really good 
> reason to get rid of one) so users of the loser aren't stranded. 
> Besides, they get source, so they could freeze some application to a 
> particular version of the CAL and for future applications, use the one 
> in the ARM...
 >
> This same approach could have solved the whole square root problem too, 
> don't you think? :-)

That was exactly the approach taken.  I've been trying to remain polite, 
I think pretty successfully, but I finally realize what was that was 
rubbing me the wrong way.  I worked hard, in some cases unfunded, in 
other cases funded in various ways, including directly by the AJPO, on a 
number of extensions to Ada 83.  The some of the material in the ADAR 
components that Dave Emery, Ben Brosgol and I did with AJPO support 
ended up becoming the foundation of the Information Systems annex, and 
the foundation for adding decimal types to the standard.  Some other 
parts of ADAR didn't make it.  Great!  That was exactly the intent.  To 
do the experimentation needed before things got addeded to the standard. 
  I also worked on the CRG to figure out what should be done about 
Unicode and ISO 10646 (in Ada 95) and the SQL RG where even we said 
don't put it in.

With NUMWG and then the NRG, I was more of an interested spectator than 
a member with all the other things going on.  But again the process was 
the same.  There were lots of meetings and discussions, many draft 
standards distributed--incuding reference implementations, several 
approved ISO standards and then those standards were pulled into Ada 95.

I guess in this area I have always been willing to jump in and do the 
work, and then not too concerned about whether that work ends up as part 
of the Ada standard and/or supported by vendors.  There have been a 
couple areas where I do think wrong decisions were made.  But to a great 
extent it is much more important to TRY and see what happens. 
Sometimes, as with SQL and SAMeDL, all you find out is that there still 
isn't a good solution available.

A big part of the problem in SQL to Ada bindings is a cognative 
dissonance.  The approaches that seem natural in Ada clash with SQL 
usage and vice-versa.  That's why I became so excited by the 
Bounded_String_Array abstraction that I posted a few days ago.  I think 
I may be able to use it to write a decent ODBC binding that doesn't 
require a sea of type declarations and generics.

-- 
                                        Robert I. Eachus

"Quality is the Buddha. Quality is scientific reality. Quality is the 
goal of Art. It remains to work these concepts into a practical, 
down-to-earth context, and for this there is nothing more practical or 
down-to-earth than what I have been talking about all along...the repair 
of an old motorcycle."  -- from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle 
Maintenance by Robert Pirsig