* NRC CSTB Ada Public Briefing Summary
@ 1996-11-01 0:00 Software Engineering News
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Computer Science and Telecommunications Board
National Research Council
210 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20418
Phone: (202)334-2318
Fax: (202)334-2318
Internet: CTSB@NAS.EDU
World Wide Web: WWW2.NAS.EDU/CTSBWEB
Office Location
Milton Harris BLDG.RM 560
2001 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20007
(Off Whitehaven Street)
Committee on the Past and Present Contexts for the Use of
Ada in the Department of Defense
Barry Boehm, Chair
University of Southern California
Theodore Baker
Florida State University
Wesley Embry
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Joseph Fox
Template Software
Paul Hilfinger
University of California at Berkeley
Maretta Holden
Boeing Defense and Space Group
J. Elliot B. Moss
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Walker Royce
Rational Software Corporation
William Scherlis
Carnegie Mellon University
S. Tucker Taft
Intermetrics, Inc.
Rayford Vaughn
Electronic Data Systems Corporation
Anthony Wasserman
Interactive Development Environments, Inc.
Barbara Liskov, Special Advisor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Staff
Paul Semenza
Study Director, CSTB
Ada and Beyond: Software Policies for the Department of
Defense
What should the Department of Defense do about the Ada
programming language? Despite the language�s technical
capabilities, it has not been widely used outside of
military and other safety-critical applications, as was
hoped when the language was developed in the 1970s. The
Defense Department�s policy on programming languages, which
requires the use of Ada for all new software development,
has resulted in many conflicts and has not been implemented
evenly. Meanwhile, commercial software applications have
grown rapidly, and do not generally use Ada.
The Committee on the Past and Present Contexts for the Use
of Ada in the Department of Defense was created by the
National Research Council�s Computer Science and
Telecommunications Board to review the current policy, and
to examine the role of Ada in software development. The
study was requested by the Office of the Assistant secretary
of Defense for Command, Control, Communications, and
Intelligence. Released today, Ada and Beyond: Software
Policies for the Department of Defense presents the
committee�s findings and recommendations.
The committee concluded the vigorous support of Ada would
benefit warfighting systems, and recommends that the
Department of Defense should continue to use and promote Ada
in such systems. However, the committee found significant
problems with the two primary components of the Defense
Department�s current strategy for Ada. First, the current
programming language policy requires the use of Ada for all
new defense software, which the committee finds to be overly
broad in scope. Second, the Defense Department�s plan to
discontinue investments in both Ada technology and user-
community support will weaken the Ada infrastructure, and
will work against any requirement to use Ada in the future.
In summary, Ada and Beyond: Software Policies for the
Department of Defense concludes that the Defense Department
should take the following steps regarding Ada:
1. Continue to require Ada for its warfighting software and
drop the Ada requirement for its other software. In
commercially dominated areas, using Ada is generally less
cost-effective than using other languages. Requiring the
use of Ada in these areas would place the Defense Department
at a competitive disadvantage. In warfighting application
areas, however, Ada�s technical capabilities for real-time,
high assurance custom software are generally superior to
those of other languages. The Defense Department�s
investments in Ada to date have created a set of Ada-based
production factors that give its system advantages in these
areas.
2. Provide roughly $15 million per year for Ada
infrastructure support, or drop the requirement to use Ada
entirely. The commercial marketplace will not sustain a
robust Ada infrastructure. However, a relatively modest
($15 million per year) investment at the margin by the
Defense Department would be sufficient to sustain a robust
Ada infrastructure for warfighting applications. The
Defense Department�s inventory of more than 50 million lines
of warfighting software must either be maintained in Ada or
converted to another programming language. The recommended
investment is modest with this maintenance burden.
3. Make programming language decisions in the context of a
Software Engineering Plan Review process. The choice of
programming language is one component of the software-
engineering process, and should be considered in the broader
context of decisions regarding architecture, software reuse,
and software process management.
In the course of this study, the committee also concluded
that the currently available data are insufficient, on their
own, to accurately determine the impact of programming
language choice on the outcome of defense programs.
Committee briefings also highlighted the difficulty that
program managers have in finding data on which they can make
informed decisions. Based on the limitations of
availability data, the committee has made an additional
recommendation that the Defense Department institute a
corporate effort to collect software metrics to guide future
policy and management decisions.
The committee developed its recommendations, presented in
detail in Ada and Beyond: Software Policies for the
Department of Defense, in light of changes in the
environment for military software development. A decade
ago, the policy preference for Ada had some merit. Most
software was custom made, and Ada had a good track record in
delivering custom software with higher quality and lower
life-cycle costs. However, custom Ada solutions are no
longer competitive in many application areas, due to several
trends. First, software solutions increasingly depend on
commercial-off-the-shelf, or COTS, software, which provides
much of an application�s information infrastructure,
including operating system, database management, networking,
user interface, and distributed processing functions. Much
of this software is written in programming languages other
than Ada, that often do not have readily available
interfaces to programs written in Ada.
Second, software for many application areas is increasingly
developed in so-called "product-line" architectures, which
enable software assets to be reused across families of
applications. These product-line solutions are driven by
strongly coupled "production factors," including software
components, processes and methods, human resources, and
expertise in particular domains. In warfighting
applications areas such as weapon control and electronic
warfare, there is little commercial development, and the
Defense Department has established a strong community of
warfighting software developers whose production factors are
oriented to Ada. However, for the numerous defense
applications in which the market is dominated by commercial
solutions, such as finance and logistics, production factors
have been built around programming languages other than Ada
putting solutions at a disadvantage.
Several other factors have strongly influenced the
committee�s findings and recommendations. One is the
Defense Department�s increasing emphasis on information
dominance. According to Secretary of Defense William Perry,
the Defense Department�s warfighting strategy "sustains and
builds on ... the application of information technology to
gain great military leverage to continue to give us [an]
unfair competitive advantage." A second factor is that the
Defense Department now has more than 50 million lines of
operational weapon systems software written in Ada, with a
great deal more under development. Most of this software is
in critical warfighting applications areas. There are no
quick and cheap ways to translate this software into other
languages. Polices and investment strategies that weaken
Ada support for this software are very risky.
A third factor is that, while language proliferation has
decreased, "polylingualism" is here to stay. One goal of
developing Ada was to reduce the proliferation of
programming languages used in defense systems, estimated to
be approximately 450 in the 1970s. The number of languages
used in defense systems has indeed decreased. The use of
machine and assembly languages has diminished, and the
number of third-generation languages in use has been
reduced. However, there has been a rapid increase in
development of fourth-generation languages by the commercial
sector, and increased use of these languages by defense
programs. A final factor is that choosing a programming
language is one of several key software engineering
decisions. The requirement to use Ada and the waiver
process both isolate programming language decisions from
other key software engineering decisions. Modern software
engineering considerations include the choices of computer
and software architectures, COTS components, and milestone
schedules. This arrangement creates and incentive for
defense programs to make decisions that are not optimal for
the Defense Department as an organization. Future
programming language decisions need to be part of an
integrated software engineering process.
This report will be available electronically on the World
Wide Web in mid-November at <www2.nas.edu/cstbweb>. Paper
copies will be made available in December.
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