SEIC News, W/E March 7, 1997

SEIC News, W/E March 7, 1997

[SEIC]

Software Engineering News Brief
Week Ending:  March 7, 1997

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NEW AJPO CHIEF DEFENDS ADA
Topic: Ada

The new interim AJPO Chief, Army Lt. Col. John A. "Drew" Hamilton, Jr., 
has some concerns about the NRC Ada study findings.  The NRC study 
(http://sw-eng.falls-church.va.us/docs/present/nrc) concluded that 
support for Ada should be limited to warfighting systems. Lt. Col. 
Hamilton feels that the report's definition of "warfighting" is too 
narrow, and the report's assumption that COTS will serve as an 
alternative to Ada system development.

"You're certainly not going to find fire control software for an M12A 
tank at your local Egghead," stated Hamilton in reference to the COTS 
plan.  Hamilton also made it clear that although he is a staunch Ada 
supporter, he is aware of certain realities stating, "...as much as I love 
Ada, I love the Army more. We need to do what's right for the service."

SOURCE:  Lais, Sami, "New AJPO chief defends Ada," Government Computer 
News, March 3, 1997, v.16, n.5, pp.45-46, http://www.gcn.com. 

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ADA PIVOTAL IN THE SUCCESS OF DMLSS
Topic:  Ada, COE

The Office of Defense Health Affairs' new Defense Medical Logistics 
Standard Support (DMLSS) system is proving to be a success by cutting 
costs and speeding deliveries to DoD medical facilities.  The DMLSS's 
data warehouse is at 500,000 items and growing.  Ada is the basis for many 
programs that convert data to common formats and populate the data warehouse.

The next release of the DMLSS is expected to comply with DoD's Common 
Operating Environment (COE) strictures.

SOURCE:  Olsen, Florence, "Health records project hits paydirt," 
Government Computer News.  Feb., 24, 1997, v.16 n.4 pp. 1, 8.

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THE VERDICT IS STILL OUT ON O-O DATABASES
Topic:  Reuse

John McCormick, in his recent article in GCN, warns the buyer to beware 
of all the claims being made about O-O databases.  He contends that the 
jury is still out on whether OODBMS objects will be as reusable as 
developers contend, or whether they represent an evolutionary improvement 
making database programming a bit easier.

SOURCE:  McCormick, John, "Object-Oriented Databases," Government 
Computer News, Feb. 24, 1997, v.16, n.4, pp. 43-45.

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ADA SUBTYPES CAN HELP SOLVE Y2K PROBLEM
Topic: Ada

In a letter to the editor of Crosstalk, Robert Leif contends that there 
shouldn't be a Y2K problem with Ada or its successors, since Ada's 
package structure will easily permit increasing the upper bound of 
Year_Number beyond 2099.

Leif also asserts that in the cases of problematic non-Ada code, it would 
be more cost-effective to replace present legacy code with Ada and 
AdaSAGE rather than repair it.

For more information on AdaSAGE, visit:  
<http://sageftp.inel.gov/sage/homepage.htm>.

SOURCE:  Crosstalk, Feb., 1997, v.10, n.2, p.2.

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COE NOW SERVING UP JCALS
Topic: COE, Reuse

The COE is now serving up JCALS.  The Joint Computer-Aided Acquisition 
and Logistics Support System is the latest component of the DoD's Common 
Operating Environment (COE).

At the behest of Rear Adm. John Gauss, director of DISA JIEO, the LCALS 
team broke out the system's computing infrastructure software into 
segments for use as COE application programming interfaces that DoD 
organizations can reuse for JCALS development projects.

SOURCE:  Grimm, Vanessa Jo, "COE now serving up JCALS," Government 
Computer News, Dec., 9, 1996, v.15, n.30, p.51.

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