Info Systems & Ada of the Future

[RHARWOOD@EAST.Pima.edu (Ray Harwood)]

In INFO-ADA Digest #224, Ken McCook talks about the relative (de-)merits
of using Ada in an IMS setting.  (Sorry, but I don't have the utility that
allows me to quote and re-quote the full text of everyone's comments!)

If I read the Ada 9X Project Report correctly, Ken, help is on the way.
Yes, it'll be "down the road aways", but it's coming!  My understanding is
that there will be several "annexes" to the LRM which will be "optional
implementations" as chosen by each compiler vendor.  One of the Annexes
(again, the way I read it) will be the Information Systems annex, and may
contain SQL bindings, provision for BCD arithmetic, and all those other
mainframe sorts of things that most embedded weenies (myself included!)
don't have much use for.  In fact, I think most of the "embedded systems ONLY"
stuff will migrate into it's own annex.  The "basic" LRM will stil have all
the types, sobprograms, packages, generics, statements, tasks, etc., but
it's a safe bet that very few mainframe (and mini) Ada compiler vendors are
going to allow the average programmer the ability to trap hardware interrupts.

Ray Harwood