From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_40,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!A.ISI.EDU!WHITAKER From: WHITAKER@A.ISI.EDU Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: ATLAS/Ada Meeting Report Message-ID: <9008241409.AA01351@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu> Date: 24 Aug 90 00:53:29 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet List-Id: ABET Meeting in Washington DC (7-9 August 1990) Report by William A. Whitaker ATLAS (Abbreviated Test Language for All Systems) is an IEEE Standard, a version of which (C/ATLAS, IEEE Std 716) been adopted by the DoD and is specified for maintenance test programs. It is the basis for test programs for such systems as the Air Force MATE. Recently DoD has been pushing for the use of Ada in all applications, including ATE, in order to get commonality with factory test, simulation, built-in test, etc. Maintenance test has been a tight community based in recent years on ATLAS. IEEE SCC 20, the ATLAS standards committee, recognized this customer pressure to take advantage of Ada in this context and set up an "ABET" (ATLAS/Ada Based Environment for Test) working group to develop the Ada binding for ATLAS. The Summer 1990 ABET meeting was sponsored by the Air Force, demonstrating their commitment to the effort. The whole Committee so far has concentrated on Requirements and Rationale documents, only recently has technical work begun in earnest. The ATLAS interface, which might be considered the main binding, the Ada specs that correspond to ATLAS semantics, is making progress. For this they have an extensive draft by Jeudha Ziegler of ITT under STARS sponsorship. So while there is no official draft standard by the committee, this is an available document to comment against. Work so far has been concentrated on scoping the product, determining how much it must look like ATLAS and how much good Ada practice can be introduced. I introduced to possibility that all physical units should be strongly typed, so that voltage cannot be added to time! Other technical questions to be studied include how best to represent data bits in Ada, recognizing the PACK limitations of some compilers. A system for handling issues, similar to AIs is being set up to document the development. Likewise there were drafts of Test Equipment Configuration Language (implementing TEDL - IEEE P993) and Instrumentation Programming Language (implementing RDL - IEEE P981) provided by Charles Morris of Lockheed Sanders. Since nobody presently seems to be implementing TEDL, an ABET prototype might be the first exercise of this "soon to be" standard. There are 3 more meeting of the ABET subcommittee already scheduled: Florida in October, Washington in February (5-7), and Germany in May of 1991. ABET is an example of an applications area in which Ada can make a great contribution, and which should be carefully monitored to assure that it fully exploits Ada capabilities. So far there has been no participation in the Working Groups from the Ada community. The implications of this you can judge for yourself. THdihe Chairman of ABET is Richard Weger, AAI Corp, PO Box 126, Hunt Valley, MD 21030-0126, (301) 628-3634. -------