Re: A few notes

[wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu (Bill Wolfe)]

From ted@grebyn.com (Ted Holden):
>>   STANFINS-R was completed on time and within budget, and it was
>>   observed that the Ada code ran significantly faster than its COBOL
>>   counterpart.  This is despite the fact that STANFINS-R had to take
>>   raw COBOL programmers and train them to be Ada Software Engineers,
>>   despite the fact that a CICS binding did not exist when the project
>>   began (and therefore had to be created during the project), and despite
>>   the fact that a Datacom/DB interface also had to be forced into existence.
>  
>>   Not only was the Army's Information Systems Software Development Center
>>   tremendously pleased with the results, the Air Force has just announced
>>   its decision to use STANFINS-R as its financial software system as well.
>  
> In the current (March 19) issue of Government Computer News, page 62, we
> read that the SAT for STANFINS is now scheduled for May of this year.
> Actually, that's a reschedule, and probably one of several.  

   Now let's inquire as to WHY there was a reschedule.  I called the  
   Chief of the U.S. Army's Field Accounting Systems Division and found
   that STANFINS-R had been rescheduled SOLELY TO COMPLY WITH GRAMM-RUDMAN.
   The rescheduling enabled enough work to be deferred into the following 
   year to permit the current-year budget to meet the Gramm-Rudman budget
   constraints.  ALL Government projects are subject to such rescheduling!!
    
& Major General Alonzo E. Short is quoted in the article as follows:
&  
&      "We are going to have to spawn something in Ada - a system that has
&      been planned, developed, and placed on the street in such a way
&      that someone can say, 'Ada is solving my problem'.

   And STANFINS-R is precisely that system.

&      Because such a system has not been delivered yet, a fair assessment
&      is that the jury is still out on whether Ada can be used
&      efficiently in a large information system.

   True, but the system is 1.8 million lines of code, on schedule and
   within budget, and rapidly approaching its scheduled delivery date,
   so the jury won't have very long to deliberate. 


   Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu