Is the "Ada mandate" being reconsidered?

[msb@sei.cmu.edu (Mark Bell)]

11-Jun-96 12:12	Michael Levasseur <levass@gdesystems.com> writes

>COTS - These movement to COTS hass been including move and
>more code that has been written in C++ as well 4GL stuff.

COTS may not be the panacea that everyone thinks it is.  There
are questions to consider with the COTS approach:

1.  What level of testing and verification was performed ?
    Is this information available to the user ?
2.  What kind of documentation is available ?  Do programmer
    reference manuals, API manuals, system manuals etc exist ?
    If they do, are they meaningful ?
3.  What kind of user support is available, and what is it's
    availability ?  24 Hour support ?? 
4.  Is the company going to be around in "N" years ?
5.  How long will the company support the COTS product ? 
    Support costs money.  
6.  Is the source code available ??  It's very frustrating to
    track a problem down to a COTS API call and not
    be able to proceed further !  If the source code is available,
    how long will it take to get it ?  I've experienced situations
    where a company has to "find it" !!

I'm not saying that COTS is categorically bad;  I'm saying that COTS 
is not the end all solution to all our problems.

The allure of saving development time by purchasing COTS software
may be eaten up during integration time when it is discovered that
the software is not robust in your particular application because you
are exercising it in ways the designers did not envision or test for. 

Manuals/documentation, while being delivered in nicely bound and
pretty books, may be verbose but don't say much.  A programmers
reference manual is great, but are example provided to give you
an idea of how to use all the software from a systems point of
view ??  Are system level issues dissucced anywhere (for example, 
a manual that specifies the intended uses, and methods of use, 
of the COTS software ) ??

How widely is the COTS software used currently ??  If it's new,
you can count on bugs.  If you find COTS bugs that are potential 
show stoppers for you program, what is the COTS vendor going to
do about it ??  If you represent only a small percentage of the
COTS product user community, you may find that the vendor will
not do anything.  If the COTS software has been around for a few years, 
and not used widely, what kind of support can be expected in the future
from the COTS vendor ??   Does a support group exists for the COTS
software ??





Mark S. Bell                           412-268-7925 (Voice)
Software Engineering Institute         412-268-5758 (Fax)
Carnegie Mellon University             ** These are my opinions, 
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