Internal data representation

[LEHMAN%ASD.SPAN@STAR.STANFORD.EDU (Richard A Lehman, DMSTB)]

Bernard Badger of Harris states "I've been wondering why you 
*want* to access the ``internal'' respresentation.

Here at Johnson Space Center on the Space Station Program we
have to access the ``internal'' representation of Ada types
on many different tupes Heterogenous machines.  This is the only
way we can provide a common transmission format to communicate
amoung different type of ISAs.  

In fact a lot of our system software allows the user to view only
his machine and not to be concerned that the application on a SUN
may be communication complex Ada types to a VAX, Apollo, INTEL, 
Symbolic, or other one of a kind machines.

For the system software writer this is an important issue.  How
does the compiler writer represent the internal format of the
data.  This is one level of concern above portable software.  Not
only does the system utilities have to be able to compile and run
on different platforms, but the data also has be able to be exchanged.

Richard A Lehman
Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Co.
2400 NASA Rd 1
Houston, TX   77058
713.333.7074
lehman%asd.span@jpl-vlsi.arpa