CFCSEIC News Briefs Week Ending May 1, 1998

CFCSEIC News Briefs Week Ending May 1, 1998

[CFCSEIC]

Center for Computer Systems Engineering News Briefs
Week Ending:  May 1, 1998
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CONTENTS:
FGIPC MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE XVIII CONFERENCE
SUPPORTING OBJECT INITIALIZATION IN ADA 95
STRICOM USES VISUAL 2000 TO IDENTIFY RISKY DATE CODE

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FGIPC MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE XVIII CONFERENCE

Topic:  Software Engineering

The Federation of Government Information Processing Council (FGIPC) will 
hold its Management of Change XVIII Conference:  "Approaching the Next 
Millennium... the Challenges Continue!" from June 7-10, 1998, in Irvine, 
CA.  The focus of the conference will be "High Tech Solutions with an 
Intergovernmental Approach", and the FGIPC is working to make MOC XVIII 
the premier intergovernmental-industry IT event of the year.  The 
conference is targeted to senior-level government leaders and their 
industry counterparts.  It has been designed to provide participants with 
the opportunity to meet and learn more about the IT needs of federal, 
state, and local IT managers and the ways in which industry can satisfy 
their large and often complex IT requirements.  Further information 
about the conference, including program details, a full list of speakers, 
session summaries, and on-line registration can be found at 
http://www.fgipc.org.  Additional registration information may be 
obtained directly from FGIPC.

Source:  FGIPC, 3601E Chain Bridge Road, Fairfax, VA 22030, 
(703) 218-1955, FAX:  (703) 218-1960, e-mail:  fgipc@fgipc.org.
  
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SUPPORTING OBJECT INITIALIZATION IN ADA 95

Topic:  Ada 95

Zeki Bayram, the author of this article, which appears in the May 1998 
issue of the Journal of Object-Oriented Programming (JOOP), describes a 
technique he has developed to augment the initialization of 
newly-created objects in Ada 95.  According to Bayram, there are two 
important aspects to writing correct and maintainable object-oriented 
programs:  automatic object initialization, which occurs when an object 
is created; and cleanup, which occurs when an object is removed from 
memory.  The Ada.Finalization package provides two tagged type 
definitions, "controlled" and "limited_controlled", each of which has an 
initialization procedure defined for it.  The problem, according to 
Bayram, is that only one parameter can be supplied to each procedure.  He 
argues that successful initialization of any kind usually requires 
additional information, which needs to be supplied through arguments.  
Bayram suggests that parameters could be supplied during the 
initialization procedure by using pointers to actual parameters, which 
could be passed as access discriminants to tagged derived records.  
According to Bayram, the initialization procedure could then use the 
values pointed to by the discriminants to perform any initialization 
action necessary.  In his conclusions, he suggests that Ada's 
initialization limitations might be solved by slightly incrementing Ada's 
syntax to allow the specification of constructor procedures.

Source:  Zeki Bayram, bayram@boun.edu.tr, "Implementing Constructor Calls 
with Parameters in Ada 95", The Journal of Object-Oriented Programming, 
May 1998, v11, n2  http:  www.sigs.com; 

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STRICOM USES VISUAL 2000 TO IDENTIFY RISKY DATE CODE

Topic:  Y2k/Ada

According to Mark Jozwiak, project director of the Army Simulation, 
Training and Instrumentation Command (STRICOM), the Visual 2000 tool from 
McCabe & Associates Inc. of Columbia, MD, is the best analytical tool he 
has found for testing application code at STRICOM's combat training 
centers.  Visual 2000 is a test-coverage analyzer that identifies the 
high-risk modules within applications, enabling users to design tests 
that target the date-logic paths their applications use most frequently.  
Tom McCabe, founder of McCabe & Associates, notes that he has seen fewer 
instances of date variables and date-dependent logic in government code 
than in financial code.  Visual 2000's test-coverage analyzer creates 
management reports showing the percentage of completed logic-path tests 
and future-date tests, and shows which applications are going to fail. 
This tool, though very useful, still requires considerable human 
expertise, according to STRICOM's Jozwiak.  Visual 2000 runs under 
SunSoft Solaris, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 95 operating 
systems.  It analyzes the COBOL, C, C++, Visual BASIC, FORTRAN and Ada 
languages.

Source   Florence Olsen, "Tool identifies risky date code", Government 
Computer News, Apr. 27, 1998  http://www.gcn.com/gcn/1998/april27/enter.htm

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