Software Engineering News Brief

[seic@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us (Software Engineering News)]

Software Engineering News Brief
Week Ending 11/1/96.

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ARTICLE CODE KEY:

Articles contained in the Software Engineering News Brief are classified 
according to the four major areas covered by the Software Engineering 
Information Center (SEIC).  They are:

ADA:  Ada and Ada 95 related issues.
REUSE:  Software reuse related issues.
DII:  Defense Information Infrastructure related issues.
COE:  Common Operating Environment related issues.

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AJPO SAYS ADA'S FUTURE IS SOLID

Even if Ada loses its preferred status for all but military weapons 
systems, the language won't die, said Dr. Charles Engle, chief of the 
Defense Department's Ada Joint Program Office.

AJPO, which promotes the DoD-funded language, plans to win greater 
acceptance through education, Engle said.  This year, all freshman at 
the U.S. Military Academy and the Air Force Academy are required to take 
Ada 95 programming.  AJPO has won commitments to Ada 95 from 17 DoD program 
managers, through incentives that include free training and financial 
assistance with tools and bindings.

Engle said that a National Research Council review of DoD's Ada policy, 
due October 31, likely will recommend that Ada remain the preferred 
language for certain command-and-control systems.  He expects the report 
to recommend using commercial applications elsewhere.

TOPIC:  ADA

SOURCE:  Government Computer News v15(25), Oct. 7, 1996, p.3.

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YEAR 2000  NO PROBLEM FOR ADA

Ada developers who've been scorned by the C/C++ camp might be laughing 
all the way to the year 2000.

Ada applications aren't likely to fail any time between now and January 1, 
2000, or beyond, for the simple reason that Ada doesn't let programmers 
represent dates in two-digit shorthand.

"There's no problem with Ada," said Jacques Brygier, marketing director 
for Thompson Software Products.  "The language has been defined in a way 
that you cannot make this kind of mistake."  

According to Dr. Charles Engle, chief of the Ada Joint Program Office, the 
Ada language itself has built-in dates from 1901 to 2099, thus eliminating 
the 2000 problem.

TOPIC: ADA

SOURCE:  Olsen, Florence.  "Ada sails smoothly into 2000," Government 
Computer News v15(25), Oct. 7, 1996, p. 33.  

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DCE INCORPORATED INTO WORLD WIDE WEB CLIENTS AND SERVERS

Government Computer News reports that vendors have announced the first 
products incorporating the Distributed Computed Environment (DCE) into 
World Wide Web clients and servers.

IBM's DCE-based "DFS Web" and Transarc Corporation's DCE "DFS Light" 
incorporate DCE server software and protocols for making Web-type 
environments practical for secure intranets.  They will deal with a 
"security problem that the Web up to this point has not been able to 
solve," said Ron Galvin, a consultant with Keane Federal Systems in 
Columbia, MD.

The products, priced at about $75 for client software and at about $1500 
for the server, will be shipped this Fall and in early 1997.

TOPIC:  DII, COE

SOURCE:  Olsen, Florence.  "DCE services start to appear in Web clients 
and servers," Government Computer News v15(27), Oct. 21, 1996, p. 36.
  
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DOD SIMULATION STANDARDS PROMOTE REUSE

The Defense Department has established a new High Level Architecture 
(HLA) in order to attain a higher return on its investment in modeling 
and simulation technology.  This new technical architecture, to which all 
present and future simulation projects must conform, lays out basic rules 
of behavior simulation that programs should follow and defines the 
interfaces through which independently developed programs can interact.

DoD believes that HLA will make it easier to get more use and, 
importantly, more reuse out of its simulation programs.  By providing 
interoperability, the new architecture will allow the quick "federation" 
of simulation programs by tying together programs developed through 
different services.  Joint programs are a priority because man DoD 
missions require joint service participation.

An order signed last month by the under-secretary of Defense for 
acquisition and technology requires all future simulation programs to 
comply with HLA and all existing programs to be brought into compliance 
or phased out by the first day of fiscal year 2001.

TOPIC:  REUSE

SOURCE:  Monroe, John Stein.  "DoD adopts simulation standards," Federal 
Computer Week v10(30), October 7, 1996, p. 10, 16.

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The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Software Engineering 
Information Center (SEIC) "Software Engineering News Brief" is a  
compilation of summaries from software engineering-related   
articles in trade magazines, newsletters and press releases. The DISA 
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