Re: In defense of Admiral tuttle

[agate!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!cs.utexas.edu!milano!photon.mcc.com!brel and@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Mark A. Breland)]

In article 93Jul13120046@goldfinger.mitre.org, emery@goldfinger.mitre.org (Davi
d Emery) writes:
>A problem that I've seen with much of the rush towards 'consortium'
>solutions (and this is NOT a criticism of MCC or any particular
>consortium, but rather a criticism of "the rush") is that they tend to
>be very language and technology specific.  For instance, OSF's DCE has
>serious problems with respect to Ada, and even with respect to the
>emerging POSIX .4a standard.  The X Window System has had problems
>with concurrency until recently.  

[much good POSIX and language interoperability/unability stuff deleted]

I realize you weren't specifically calling out MCC as part of "the rush",
Dave, but you provided me with an entree to elaborate on a paradigm shift
we have here as well.  ;) Your point about the unsuitability of technology
and language specific solutions is 100% accurate.  Why?  Because the end
result is a point solution directed at a highly vertical slice of the
problem space.

I don't understand your indictment of consortiums as being pre-disposed to
address problems with such vertical solutions, unless, of course, all
members have an identical problem they want to solve in the same way.  The
system architecture migration topic I mentioned; however, represents the
more adaptable approach you recommend...to be responsive to a broad range
of technologies/languages.  We envision problem solutions to be inclusionary
rather than exclusionary because of the quite broad and eclectic mix of
our members.  Therefore, our implementations of major initiatives (such as
system migration) are language and hardware independent.

It does a major insurance company no good to be told we can convert any huge
mainframe dependent architecture to a parallel architecture at 5 times the
performance and half the expense, BUT ONLY IF the legacy code is written in
FORTRAN IV targeted for re-implementation as Lisp...and all the insurance
company's software is written in COBOL.  See?  So the point is, diverse
consortiums with common problems can yield robust, adaptable, and flexible
solutions...and that's the direction we deliberately pursue to provide the
most benefit for all our members.

---
Mark A. Breland - Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC)
Advanced Systems and Networks                     | voice:    (512) 338-3509
3500 West Balcones Center Drive                   | FAX:      (512) 338-3900
Austin, Texas 78759-6509   USA                    | internet: breland@mcc.com