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=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,f45b1f6d53ecbae4 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: olavip@kaarne.cs.tut.fi (Poutanen Olavi) Subject: Re: Why couldn't an operating system be written in ada Date: 1996/07/16 Message-ID: <4sg0k2$7eg@peippo.cs.tut.fi>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 169226007 distribution: inet references: <4s8rud$9j3@tribune> <4sdggj$ksg@news.ida.org> organization: Testwell nntp-posting-user: olavip newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-07-16T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: The Nokia MPS 10 machine was all built around Ada. Its OS and all other subsystems were written in Ada. The hardware architecture was prorietary, "home designed". The instruction set and Ada run-time system were to some extent desingned hand-by-hand putting the implementation to that side where it was most convenient/efficient. This effort took place in Finland at Nokia Data System roughly around the years 1979..1987. This machine was supposed to become a winner, to contain the most advanced techniques and ideas. At the early 80's Ada was one of those. I personally was involved in the MPS 10 effort primariliy as being in charge of the RDBMS system implemented in Ada (see Proceedings of the Ada Europe 1985, Paris) and of some Ada testing tools (Ada Europe 1987, Stockholm and Quality Week 1993, San Francisco). Nokia Data, today known as ICL Data (Nokia Corp sold its computer manufacturing branch to ICL Plc/UK sometimes 1990), had been a leading provider of bank systems (3-tier architechture) to Finnish banks. The previous solution was based (branch office computers) on also Nokia- proprietary Mikko-3 computers. I remember one special argumentation in favor of Ada in that business situtation: It was envisioned (at early 80's) that the future is in open architectures and standard hardware solutions. Perhaps the banks won't buy a yet another system upgrade where they should again build all their applications from scratch. Ada and its portability was supposed to help here, as a means to carry the applications to the new platform. The next platform came soon: Intel 80286/386(/486) and OS/2. We bravely tried to get an Ada environment into OS/2. But due to various reasons Ada really didn't take off on that environment at Nokia. Anyways, the MPS 10 machine has been in use in a couple of Finnish banks for many years (as a branch office server having certain responsibility of the overall system). It was not many years ago when I still saw those machines, don't know if there are any more in production use. Once the bugs and inefficiencies of the MPS 10 systems were ironed away and the usage got stabilized, it was amazing with how little maintenance staff the support could be managed. On peak years the development staff was c. 200 people. Today they are still either at ICL doing the Team OFFICE product or at Nokia Corp doing telecommunications or mobile phones software. Just my 2 Eurocents... - Olavi -------------------- *** Code hard, test well! *** ------------------------ Olavi Poutanen E-mail: olavip@cs.tut.fi Testwell Oy Tel: +358-31-316-5464 Kanslerinkatu 8, FIN-33720 Tampere, Finland Fax: +358-31-318-3311 (After 12 Oct 1996 00:00 use Tel: +358-3-316-5464, Fax: +358-3-318-3311) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------