SEIC News Brief, Week Ending November 29, 1996

[seic@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us (SEIC)]

Software Engineering News Brief
Week Ending:  November 29, 1996 

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ADA VS. THE COMMERCIAL WORLD
Topic: Ada

John Stein Monroe reports in the latest issue of Federal Computer Week 
that Ada remains a vibrant language despite a smaller market share than 
some commercial languages.  Commercial languages are proliferating 
throughout the Department of Defense (DoD), but Ada is still preferred 
for many applications and is second only to COBOL in its use in DoD 
information systems.  In fact, the DoD and its contractors have developed 
more than 50 million lines of Ada code.

Recent developments may prove fruitful to the future of Ada.  Java, the 
immensely popular Web tool from Sun Microsystems, Inc., is highly 
interoperable with Ada.  This commonality has DoD and NASA users 
intrigued about the possibility of "Web-enabling" Ada applications.

Despite the prospect of eventually losing ground to commercial languages, 
Ada's outlook looks bright with new opportunities such as the WWW keeping 
interest in Ada high.

SOURCE:  Monroe, John Stein.  "It's Ada vs. the commercial world - and 
the lady's still slugging."  Federal Computer Week. November 18, 1996. 
v.10, n.34, pp. 32-33.

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NASA REUSES WITH S.O.R.T.
Topic: Reuse

The Software Optimization and Resue Technology (SORT) is a tool to 
facilitate the adoption of reuse throughout NASA.  SORT objectives 
include the performance of domain engineering on selected domains at 
various NASA centers, the establishment of model-based domain-specific 
reuse for NASA, the transfer and adoption of reuse technologies into 
NASA, and provision of metrics, lessons learned, and other feedback to NASA.

SORT is providing workshops on software reuse and domain engineering 
technology transfer.  Visit the SORT home page at <http://sort.ivv.nasa.gov>.

SOURCE:  ACM Ada Letters.  November/December 1996, v. XVI, n.6, p.39.

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RPM OFFERS REUSE ENVIRONMENT
Topic: Reuse

Reuse Process Manager (RPM) offers a configurable reuse-based software 
development environment with reuse-based methodologies, tools and 
training.  It is a user-friendly, windows-based environment 
integrating reuse-based methodologies, tools, training and project 
management.

RPM, a formal, reuse-based methodology, includes tools launching, project 
management, customization, reporting, and multimedia training.  Among many 
other features, RPM shows how to evaluate, select, create and reuse the 
following:  application architectures and templates; data and process 
models;  prototypes; utility functions; and objects.

For more information, contact Dr. Carma McClure, Extended Intelligence, 
Inc., 25 E. Washington St., Ste. 600, Chicago, IL 60602, t.312/346-5245, 
f.312-372-7762.  

SOURCE:  ACM Ada Letters.  November/December, v.XVI, n.6, p.39.

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