SEIC News Brief, W/E Feb. 14, 1997

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

Software Engineering News Brief
Week Ending:  February 14, 1997

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LT. GEN. EDMONDS PLANS TO STEP DOWN
Topic:  Ada, Reuse, DII, COE

Air Force Lt. Gen. Albert J. Edmonds, director of the Defense 
Information Systems Agency (DISA), last month announced plans to retire, 
though he did not set a date.

Edmonds, who became the second director of DISA on July 29, 1994, said in 
an interview that he will leave the agency satisfied that he has met the 
major challenges he faced when he took command.

SOURCE: Bob Brewin, Federal Computer Week, 
<http://www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1997/0203/edmonds.htm>.  

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FUN AND GAMES WITH ADA
Topic: Ada

Ada Towers, ver. 1.00, is a solitaire-type card game written in Ada.  The 
game is approximately 2,000 lines of Ada code, and the User Interface 
library is about 5,000 lines of Ada code.

Version 1.00 is freely available and can be found at 
<http://sw-eng.falls-church.va.us/AdaIC/tools/ada-towers >.  
For further information, contact Ada Towers creator:

Bill Yow, 750 East Hidden View Dr., Phoenix, AZ 85048, 
<mailto:byow@mcimail.com>.

SOURCE:  Bill Yow.

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SCIENTIFIC HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING WITH ADA 95
Topic: Ada

Ada 95 has been successfully used in scientific high performance 
computing. A code developed by Martin J. Stift is capable of synthesizing 
the integrated polarized spectrum of a rotating magnetic star (the 
so-called Oblique Rotator), and has been successfully executed in 
parallel on several processors of a Silicon Graphics Power Challenge XL 
symmetric multiprocessing server. 

Mr. Stift found that, for the calculation of stellar spectra over large 
wavelength intervals and of stellar atmospheres, the Ada tasking model is 
much better suited than High Performance Fortran.

A first description can be found in 
http://amok.ast.univie.ac.at/~stift/parallel.html

Martin J. Stift
Institut fuer Astronomie
Tuerkenschanzstr. 17
A-1180 Wien
Tel. 43-1-4706800/35
Fax  43-1-4706800/35
stift@astro.ast.univie.ac.at 
 
SOURCE:  Martin J. Stift.

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TASK DEPENDENCE AND TERMINATION IN ADA
Topic: Ada

In her latest article, Laura K. Dillon analyzes the semantics of task 
dependence and termination in Ada.  Her article also examines the manner 
in which the termination rules affect the synchronization of concurrent 
tasks, while considering master-slave and client-server applications.

Her findings can be read in the January 1997 issue of ACM Transactions on 
Software Engineering sand Methodology.

SOURCE:  Dillon, Laura K., "Task Dependence and Termination in Ada," ACM 
Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Jan. 1997, v6, n1, 
pp80-110.

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS-4th ANNUAL OBJECT APPLICATIONS AWARDS
Topic:  Reuse
          
Object World Frankfurt '97 will take place on October 7-10, 1997 
together with COMDEX Internet at the Sheraton Conference Center
Frankfurt/Main <details at http://www.ltt.de>. One of the highlights of 
the show will be the fourth edition of the annual OMG international 
Object Application Awards.

To obtain your Entry Kit:
          
Call: +49-6173 -9558-50,
Fax:  +49-6173-9404-20,
E-mail: LogOn@omg.org, 
Download it from the Web:  http://www.ltt.de

SOURCE:  Roberto Zicari, Program Chair 
<mailto:zicari@informatik.uni-frankfurt.de>.

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