From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,7b099b2f0c22dbb,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1995-03-07 09:18:00 PST Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!explorer.csc.com!usenet From: Jeff Seigle Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: STANFINS project (was: Re: So why do we still have to use Fortran?) Date: 7 Mar 1995 16:21:42 GMT Organization: CSC Intelicom HQ, Bethesda MD Distribution: world Message-ID: <3ji16m$519@explorer.csc.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: jseigle-pc.hq.csci.csc.com X-Newsreader: Date: 1995-03-07T16:21:42+00:00 List-Id: >msjohnso@WichitaKS.HMPD.COM (Mark Johnson) wrote: >In article danpop@cernapo.cern.ch (Dan Pop) writes: > >>At the opposite pole you have Ada, which came with a lot of publicity, >>the backing of the US DoD and lots of companies implementing it in order >>to be competitive on the military market. 15 years later, virtually >>nobody is really using it and its few fans are still at the stage of >>"but wait for the next version". > >Further, a lot of the early Ada projects were not a good fit for the language. >The one I remember best was the US Army's STANFINS-R project, a rewrite of >their standard financial information system. This was essentially the Army >payroll system, and the original was some millions of lines of Cobol. I don't >really think Ada, which was intended for embedded applications, was a >particularly good language choice for the rewrite. > >Even at the time, there was lots of controversy over how successful the >project really was. I heard everything from "sterling success" to "miserable >flop - over budget, behind schedule." Never did hear what the final outcome of >the project was. Below is a message I received from Ken Fussichen, the applications manager for STANFINS Redesign: begin quote>>>> STANFINS-Redesign was a redesign of the U.S. Army's accounting system, with the exception of payroll. It was a massive undertaking that was originally to be done in COBOL with a wide variety of IBM mainframe tools. In mid-stream, the Army decided they wanted STANFINS-Redesign to be done in Ada. Who knows why. I even have documentation that says why that I only partially believe. However it was decided in March of 1987 to do this project in Ada. This was a smart decision, in retrospect. At the time the analysis that was turned over to the contractor was so poor that there was no way to meet the schedules. The Ada decision bought a full year of functional analysis, as well as time to get staff up to speed in Ada. We had few Ada experts, but we did have some smart help. We learned Ada, we learned how to put up large information system projects and we did things that the language inventors never intended for the language to do. (Ada 95 has addressed most of the weaknesses found in Ada83.) Stanfins-Redesign went in, on time, within budget and with a higher level of performance than was expected from a COBOL equivalent. Interestingly enought, the contractor (CSC) lost the recompete, for reasons that are still not clear to me. The best information I had was that the users were pleased, but the politicians and generals were not. Again, who knows. However, EDS got the follow on work. I do not know what EDS did or did not do. However, STANFINS-Redesign went for a best-of-breed competition against another program (a brittle COBOL based something or other) it lost. What was interesting is the fellow who made the decision was the primary author of the system that was selected. He announced his retirement shortly after he came under some attack in the trade press. (This is all documented stuff.) However, STANFINS-Redesign stayed dead. STANFINS-Redesign was an unqualified success. It did what the customer wanted done and it did it well. From a software engineering perspective, the statistics are incredible. I have them at home someplace. Every study of the STANFINS-Redesign project supports its success. It was killed for purely political reasons and you, my tax-paying friend, paid for it. To make matters worse, after spending four years of developing a highly qualified Ada-Information Systems staff, they let it disburse. I have all this stuff documented and I've presented it in the past to a wide variety of primarily Ada audiences. This sad story is known up and down the DoD and a clear indictment of the DoD's Ada-related decisions. I will respond to email on the subject (kfussich@csc.com), but I'm out of the STANFINS business these days and my Ada business is waning. But within limits, I'll chat. Ken Fussichen Applications Manager, STANFINS-Redesign <<<