Re: JOVIAL (was Do we need "Mission-Critical" software?)

[carr@falcon.si.com (carr_tom)]

"Ken Garlington" <Ken.Garlington@computer.org> writes:

>"Robert Dewar" <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote in message
>news:93ihgp$fah$1@nnrp1.deja.com...
>: By the way, regarding current activity in the JOVIAL area,
>: DDCI announces JOVIAL support on their main web page.

>I'm not sure what "announce" means here... according to the description of
>their JOVIAL product line, their compiler was built in 1983! IIRC, DDC-I
>(http://www.ddci.com) bought this toolset from InterACT (which was
>previously known as ACT, oddly enough) some time back. The InterACT compiler
>was the standard for the F-16 software developed at Fort Worth, and there is
>still some software which is maintained using it (less every day, as I noted
>previously). I don't remember exactly what happened to InterACT, but I
>couldn't locate them with a web search.

As I remember Advanced Computer Techniques Corp (ACT) was a wholly owned
subsidiary of InterACT.  My recollection is not entirely clear, but I believe
that InterACT was formed by some guys out of MIT and most of its work was in
banking software.  In the late 1980s ACT did the name transition from ACT to
NewCO to InterACT thereby being reabsorbed into InterACT.

My best recollection is that ACT/InterACT had some money problems from their
Ada compiler development and that they lost several key technical people
which made continued support of their JOVIAL and Ada products untenable.

>As far as I know there are also two other compilers available: the ITS
>toolset managed by the Air Force (http://www.wpafb.af.mil/jovial/) and the
>PSS compiler (http://www.pro-software.com/). These were the same three
>compilers around in 1984 when I was programming in JOVIAL, so there's
>certainly not been much growth in this field. Based on these websites, I get
>the sense that there haven't been many sales lately either.

I hear tell that the people at SEA (http://www.seadeo.com/) are still
supporting the ITS compilers as well as their own. They even have a SPARC
hosted JOVIAL which has a PowerPC target.  (Hi Bob E.)

And don't forget TLD Systems Ltd. (I don't think they have a web presence).

>In their December 2000 newsletter, DDC-I does talk about the use of
>SCORE/ANDF technology to help mitigate language obsolescence issues, and
>says: "The original code may have been written in languages not used or
>taught today, e.g. JOVIAL. Hiring programmers with these skills or even
>training current staff may not be possible. Instead of continuing the old
>language, the new software is written in a more modern language."

Seeing as the ACT JOVIAL 1750A compiler was written in Fortran and assembly
lanaguage it must be really difficult finding programmers with those skills.

> DDC-I is
>also actively promoting their support for moving from VAXen to Solaris, so
>I'd say their opinion of the future of either JOVIAL or VAX is not positive!

As I remember the SPARC/Solaris host was paid for in part by a contract that
involved Hill AFB and basically replaced the assembly language OS interface
routines with appropriate Solaris code.  Seeing as you can no longer buy
VAXen I would view moving to another host as appropriate.

/Tom
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