IDE/Rational Apex experiences

IDE/Rational Apex experiences

[Damian O'Neill]

Hi,

I'm trying to collect any thoughts, comments, suggestions or experiences that people have had in moving from a non-integrated development environment, e.g. vi for text editting, SCCS for CM, a third party compiler/debugger etc. to an integrated development environment, specifically Rational Apex supporting Ada95 and C++ in mid to large sized projects. What problems did you have, were there productivity improvements, was it better or worse than what you had, what are the good points, what are the bad points
?

Also, if you could suggest any other appropriate newsgroups it would be much appreciated.

Thanks in anticipation,

Damian

Re: IDE/Rational Apex experiences

[bklungle]

At a certain large AeroSpace company, use of Rational Apex was mandated by
management. There are 27 programmers trying to develop a very large ground
based processing system using C and C++. When 4 users log onto the Rational
Apex system, the response time on the network increases to around 20
minutes. The system HAS been optimized about as much as the Gurus know how.
At this time, there is a pending uprising within the working staff to
eliminate it. Instead of a productivity improvement, it has brought
development to a standstill. Almost everyone would rather go back to SCCS
than continue with Apex.
One users experience over the past 11 months.

cheers...bob

Damian O'Neill wrote in message ...
>Hi,
>
>I'm trying to collect any thoughts, comments, suggestions or experiences
that people have had in moving from a non-integrated development
environment, e.g. vi for text editting, SCCS for CM, a third party
compiler/debugger etc. to an integrated development environment,
specifically Rational Apex supporting Ada95 and C++ in mid to large sized
projects. What problems did you have, were there productivity improvements,
was it better or worse than what you had, what are the good points, what are
the bad points
>?
>
>Also, if you could suggest any other appropriate newsgroups it would be
much appreciated.
>
>Thanks in anticipation,
>
>Damian
>
>
>
>

Re: IDE/Rational Apex experiences

[Robert S. White]

In article <6429gb$5qh@dfw-ixnews12.ix.netcom.com>, bklungle@ix.netcom.com 
says...
>
>At a certain large AeroSpace company, use of Rational Apex was mandated by
>management. There are 27 programmers trying to develop a very large ground
>based processing system using C and C++. When 4 users log onto the Rational
>Apex system, the response time on the network increases to around 20
>minutes. 

  20 minutes for what?  What are you running Apex on?  How about a rule
of thumb to have 64 MB per user and no more than 6 users on a Sun SPARC
Ultra.  Are all of your ethernet phone closet hubs switch capable?  IME 
the use of Apex running on a SPARC box using a 486-66 PC running X over
a reasonable "switched" smart ethernet network (with the SPARCs scattered
around the workgroups) works pretty well for basic editing, version
control check in/out, compiling and building.  And yes we also use 
local IDE's like Aonix's or even Microsoft Visual C++'s and do not find
any significant speed differences.  Of course if everyone used dual
300 Mhz Pentium II PC's I'm sure we would see a big difference.  I am
curious, just what do your 27 users each have in front of them and what
actually runs Rational Apex at your site?  We have over well over 300+
Apex user licenses at the business campus where I work.

  My biggest problem with X over the network is to get a double click
mouse click action to work - seems like I have to do about four or
five mouse clicks in a row.  Find myself using the right mouse menu
instead.

_____________________________________________________________________
Robert S. White         -- An embedded systems software engineer
e-mail reply to reverse of: ia us lib cedar-rapids crpl shift2 whiter

Re: IDE/Rational Apex experiences

[bklungle]

To answer your questions as best I can:
1. From the time you press the enter key to a query to the return of the
prompt.
2. Apex is running on an SGI/Indigo2 with 128MB ram
3. All users are using SGI/Indigo2(s)
4. Don't know about the closet but will check if you really think it means
anything.
5. They are using all kinds of IDEs also (including MSVC++5.0).
6. The network is 10MB TP Ethernet.

bob


>>At a certain large AeroSpace company, use of Rational Apex was mandated by
>>management. There are 27 programmers trying to develop a very large ground
>>based processing system using C and C++. When 4 users log onto the
Rational
>>Apex system, the response time on the network increases to around 20
>>minutes.
>
>  20 minutes for what?  What are you running Apex on?  How about a rule
>of thumb to have 64 MB per user and no more than 6 users on a Sun SPARC
>Ultra.  Are all of your ethernet phone closet hubs switch capable?  IME
>the use of Apex running on a SPARC box using a 486-66 PC running X over
>a reasonable "switched" smart ethernet network (with the SPARCs scattered
>around the workgroups) works pretty well for basic editing, version
>control check in/out, compiling and building.  And yes we also use
>local IDE's like Aonix's or even Microsoft Visual C++'s and do not find
>any significant speed differences.  Of course if everyone used dual
>300 Mhz Pentium II PC's I'm sure we would see a big difference.  I am
>curious, just what do your 27 users each have in front of them and what
>actually runs Rational Apex at your site?  We have over well over 300+
>Apex user licenses at the business campus where I work.
>
>  My biggest problem with X over the network is to get a double click
>mouse click action to work - seems like I have to do about four or
>five mouse clicks in a row.  Find myself using the right mouse menu
>instead.
>
>_____________________________________________________________________
>Robert S. White         -- An embedded systems software engineer
>e-mail reply to reverse of: ia us lib cedar-rapids crpl shift2 whiter
>

Re: IDE/Rational Apex experiences

[Robert S. White]

In article <647cv8$1lf@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>, bklungle@ix.netcom.com 
says...
>
>To answer your questions as best I can:
>1. From the time you press the enter key to a query to the return of the
>prompt.

  Query, as in a CMVC query to see version history or revision notes for
a given object?  I have never had them take longer than 30 sec max (and 
that is when the local Apex storage is very busy - like when an analyst
is running a signal processing simulation).  I should have mentioned that
our main data (source/Diana/library) storage for Apex is local to each
department - that is running of a RAID tower hooked to the Sun Ultra
that supports 6 simultaneous users.

>2. Apex is running on an SGI/Indigo2 with 128MB ram

  Is the data storage local or over the network from a distant file
server?

>3. All users are using SGI/Indigo2(s)

  Seems like that should be enough CPU power and ram for one user at
least.  

>4. Don't know about the closet but will check if you really think it means
>anything.

  Not much if the user's are executing on the machine right in front
of them.  It is not likely that ethernet switching will help a 
bottleneck with distant file server storage.

>5. They are using all kinds of IDEs also (including MSVC++5.0).
>6. The network is 10MB TP Ethernet.

  Ours is also and in my team only one or two users are sitting
right in front of a Unix workstation.  The other four or five 
simultaneous users are accessing our team's two workstations via
X terminal software running on PC's.  Page up/down is instant.
Hitting "Visit" on a module name referenced in source opens up a 
new window within a second (two max).  Syntax check is normally 
under a second.  Semantic check and Analysis check maybe 10 
seconds for a typical size module.  We do check out the Apex
executable code along with a license from a distant fileserver.
That does take a while (like the 20 seconds you talk about) for 
the GUI IDE to fire up.  We pay this penalty when we use the
Apex CMVC for engineering document version control.  But 
specification revisions are not quite as frequent as code module
revisions :)

  Come to think about it running a single Apex command from a 
c shell script takes the amount of time that you are talking
about - is that what you are doing?  Starting up Apex, doing one
thing (check out, check in, etc.), and then shutting down Apex.
That is what you do when you use Apex _only_ for version control
(only a replacement for SCCS?).  Do you stay in the Apex GUI (maybe
with the included choice of the GNU EMACS editor if you prefer it)?

  In general my team's (and every other team's that I have heard from)
has have a favorable experience with using Apex.  Seems like a very
good fit for the environment for which it is intended.  I have a good
experience with it just today in having it help me develop just
the right type of rep spec record structure using just data types and
attributes and +-1 (in Ada 83).  

  I have heard that the big benefit of using it with C++ is with its 
round-trip engineering with the layered Rose CASE tool product.  
Analyze and design in UML, generate code headers/templates in Rose.
Flesh out code in Apex, debug it and make it work.  Back to Rose and
do the graphical assisted comparison with the "as built view" to the 
"as modeled view".  Now that Apex has been Ada 95 validated with its
version 2.4 we are waiting for Rational to do the same thing with
Rose/Ada95. Some of us are lazy and want the computer to take care
of the mundane picky code generation details and just let us 
concentrate on the Big Picture (and fun/challenging algorithms).  Like
when you turn up the grammer checker for your word processor on high 
after you have done some stream of conscious composing.

_____________________________________________________________________
Robert S. White         -- An embedded systems software engineer
e-mail reply to reverse of: ia us lib cedar-rapids crpl shift2 whiter

Re: IDE/Rational Apex experiences

[Robert B. Love]

In <6429gb$5qh@dfw-ixnews12.ix.netcom.com> "bklungle" wrote:
> At a certain large AeroSpace company, use of Rational Apex was mandated 
by
> management. There are 27 programmers trying to develop a very large 
ground
> based processing system using C and C++. When 4 users log onto the 
Rational
> Apex system, the response time on the network increases to around 20
> minutes. The system HAS been optimized about as much as the Gurus know 
how.

While there are valid criticisms you can make about Apex this sounds like
your network is at fault.  At my aerospace employer we have over 80 
apex users.  When the network works its a wonder, when it doesn't we get
the performance you describe.  Note the key factor is the network and its
resources.

----------------------------------------------------------------
 Bob Love                                   MIME & NeXT Mail OK
 rlove@neosoft.com                            PGP key available
----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: IDE/Rational Apex experiences

[bklungle]

Sounds like a reasonable analysis. However, 7 months of contracted Guru time
from Rational, and a lot of network analysis, did not improve the situation.
This of course doesn't mean it isn't the network, only that a lot of money
and time has and is being spent and no resolution.

bob

Robert B. Love wrote in message <6460f3$k4g$1@uuneo.neosoft.com>...
>In <6429gb$5qh@dfw-ixnews12.ix.netcom.com> "bklungle" wrote:
>> At a certain large AeroSpace company, use of Rational Apex was mandated
>by
>> management. There are 27 programmers trying to develop a very large
>ground
>> based processing system using C and C++. When 4 users log onto the
>Rational
>> Apex system, the response time on the network increases to around 20
>> minutes. The system HAS been optimized about as much as the Gurus know
>how.
>
>While there are valid criticisms you can make about Apex this sounds like
>your network is at fault.  At my aerospace employer we have over 80
>apex users.  When the network works its a wonder, when it doesn't we get
>the performance you describe.  Note the key factor is the network and its
>resources.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------
> Bob Love                                   MIME & NeXT Mail OK
> rlove@neosoft.com                            PGP key available
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>

Re: IDE/Rational Apex experiences

[David Weller]

In article <647d6t$1qf@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>,
bklungle <bklungle@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>Sounds like a reasonable analysis. However, 7 months of contracted Guru time
>from Rational, and a lot of network analysis, did not improve the situation.

Something about teaching pigs to sing comes to mind...

:-)
-- 
I refuse to let spammers control my e-mail address.  You don't have to remove
anything to send me e-mail.  Do what I do:  Save your "spam", print it
out, and mail it once a month to your Congressman.  TAKE BACK THE INTERNET!

Re: IDE/Rational Apex experiences

[Gabriel Bereny]

bklungle (bklungle@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: At a certain large AeroSpace company, use of Rational Apex was mandated by
: management. There are 27 programmers trying to develop a very large ground
: based processing system using C and C++. When 4 users log onto the Rational
: Apex system, the response time on the network increases to around 20
: minutes. The system HAS been optimized about as much as the Gurus know how.
: At this time, there is a pending uprising within the working staff to
: eliminate it. Instead of a productivity improvement, it has brought
: development to a standstill. Almost everyone would rather go back to SCCS
: than continue with Apex.
: One users experience over the past 11 months.

Mr. Klungle does not specify anything regarding the hardware on which
his company is running Apex, nor about the network configuration, nor
about what sorts of operations are being performed on the system.
I'm not doubting the veracity of his statement that things are slow
or that the system has been optimized "as much as the gurus know how".
But still we are left with questions about the precise nature of the
system abd the operations.

If Rational Apex is installed on a single IPC with 64 MB of RAM and
4 users access Apex using PCs running some xterm emulation software
as displays and rlogins to the IPC to run Apex, I have no doubt that
response will be miserable. Note that this still fits in with the
information that Mr. Klungle supplies. The system described is not
what one would recommend, but it may well be "optimized" as much as
it can be. 

We in Rational technical support have run six, seven, and more
sessions of Apex on a single server (first a SPARCstation 10, now
an UltraSPARC 2) using other SPARCs as displays many times over the 
past few years and have never seen "response time on the network 
increase to around 20 minutes" (whatever that statement may mean).

If Mr. Klungle claims that his company has a proper hardware and
network setup and that response time for an arbitrary operation
(again, there's no clue about what operations he's discussing) is
20 minutes, then I would have to doubt that the system is
optimized or that the operation to which he is referring is
"normal". "Not normal" might include checking back into a library
a 400,000 line file in which every other line has been changed.

I agree that Apex is large and slower than something like SCCS. 
On the other hand, Apex does a heck of a lot more than SCCS, than
vi, than ...  There's no free lunch. Increased functionality
requires larger amounts of space and large executables require
more resources to run. This is certainly not a quality unique to
Apex. If the current resources are strained even though they have
been optimized, then more resources are needed. This is the way
of the world in the computer business. Rational didn't make it
this way but neither can Rational change this immutable fact.

If the management of "large AeroSpace company" bought Rational Apex 
strictly as a replacement for SCCS, I'd be surprised. If SCCS is
all that is needed, the working staff has a legitimate gripe about
the response time. But I think that time griping and waiting for
system response would be better spent presenting a case to the
management that if they expect software tools to increase productivity,
then they must invest in some hardware as well.



Gabriel Bereny
Rational Software Corporation
Technical Support

Re: IDE/Rational Apex experiences

[bklungle]

1. See my previous re config.
2. If Mr Bereny wants to call 310-616-2524, I will be glad to have the
software lead on the project tell him everything he wants to know, recorded
in a log book.

cheers..bob

Gabriel Bereny wrote in message <64a8tp$lro$1@rational2.rational.com>...
>bklungle (bklungle@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
>: At a certain large AeroSpace company, use of Rational Apex was mandated
by
>: management. There are 27 programmers trying to develop a very large
ground
>: based processing system using C and C++. When 4 users log onto the
Rational
>: Apex system, the response time on the network increases to around 20
>: minutes. The system HAS been optimized about as much as the Gurus know
how.
>: At this time, there is a pending uprising within the working staff to
>: eliminate it. Instead of a productivity improvement, it has brought
>: development to a standstill. Almost everyone would rather go back to SCCS
>: than continue with Apex.
>: One users experience over the past 11 months.
>
>Mr. Klungle does not specify anything regarding the hardware on which
>his company is running Apex, nor about the network configuration, nor
>about what sorts of operations are being performed on the system.
>I'm not doubting the veracity of his statement that things are slow
>or that the system has been optimized "as much as the gurus know how".
>But still we are left with questions about the precise nature of the
>system abd the operations.
>
>If Rational Apex is installed on a single IPC with 64 MB of RAM and
>4 users access Apex using PCs running some xterm emulation software
>as displays and rlogins to the IPC to run Apex, I have no doubt that
>response will be miserable. Note that this still fits in with the
>information that Mr. Klungle supplies. The system described is not
>what one would recommend, but it may well be "optimized" as much as
>it can be.
>
>We in Rational technical support have run six, seven, and more
>sessions of Apex on a single server (first a SPARCstation 10, now
>an UltraSPARC 2) using other SPARCs as displays many times over the
>past few years and have never seen "response time on the network
>increase to around 20 minutes" (whatever that statement may mean).
>
>If Mr. Klungle claims that his company has a proper hardware and
>network setup and that response time for an arbitrary operation
>(again, there's no clue about what operations he's discussing) is
>20 minutes, then I would have to doubt that the system is
>optimized or that the operation to which he is referring is
>"normal". "Not normal" might include checking back into a library
>a 400,000 line file in which every other line has been changed.
>
>I agree that Apex is large and slower than something like SCCS.
>On the other hand, Apex does a heck of a lot more than SCCS, than
>vi, than ...  There's no free lunch. Increased functionality
>requires larger amounts of space and large executables require
>more resources to run. This is certainly not a quality unique to
>Apex. If the current resources are strained even though they have
>been optimized, then more resources are needed. This is the way
>of the world in the computer business. Rational didn't make it
>this way but neither can Rational change this immutable fact.
>
>If the management of "large AeroSpace company" bought Rational Apex
>strictly as a replacement for SCCS, I'd be surprised. If SCCS is
>all that is needed, the working staff has a legitimate gripe about
>the response time. But I think that time griping and waiting for
>system response would be better spent presenting a case to the
>management that if they expect software tools to increase productivity,
>then they must invest in some hardware as well.
>
>
>
>Gabriel Bereny
>Rational Software Corporation
>Technical Support

Re: IDE/Rational Apex experiences

[KJPrice]

I've used Rational's Apex environment on a large embedded aerospace
project in a large defense contractor's facility.  Personally, I enjoyed
working in the Apex environment.  The company obtained a coporate
license for Apex and is still using it today.  Apex is fantastic for
bringing new people up to speed quickly by bringing Code development,
CM, and compilation into a single user interface.  
     A tool of this magnitude does not go without cost, Apex requires
~64 megs of memory (I think it will use as much as you can give it). 
The platform we used were Sun SparcStation 10s and 20s; again the faster
the better.  But have you seen other IDEs run better the more memory or
speed you take away from it?  If so, bring it out of hiding and let the
world know about it!
     I've also used the following combinations: CodeWright/MSVC/PVCS,
VI/EMACS/SCCS/CC, DECAda/CMS/LSE, Borland's IDEs, and AdaCAPS; Apex has
them beat!

Just MHO though.

Damian O'Neill wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to collect any thoughts, comments, suggestions or experiences that people have had in moving from a non-integrated development environment, e.g. vi for text editting, SCCS for CM, a third party compiler/debugger etc. to an integrated development environment, specifically Rational Apex supporting Ada95 and C++ in mid to large sized projects. What problems did you have, were there productivity improvements, was it better or worse than what you had, what are the good points, what are the
> ?
> 
> Also, if you could suggest any other appropriate newsgroups it would be much appreciated.
> 
> Thanks in anticipation,
> 
> Damian

Re: IDE/Rational Apex experiences

[Don Harrison]

Thanks to those who have responded to Damian's request for experiences 
with Rational Apex. I'd like to add some context to Damian's enquiry and 
generalise it a bit.

We're about to commence a large simulator project and have settled on Ada95 
as the primary (sole?) implementation language for the still considerable 
part of the simulator left over after taking out visuals and off-the-shelf 
products. The development and target platform is Silicon Graphics (SGI) 
workstations. 

Obviously, we want to select development tools that will maximise productivity. 
The naive expectation is that an IDE would best meet that goal. Rational has 
given us a hard sell and aroused interest in their products - hence Damian's 
enquiry. 

Summarising the responses, and filtering those indicating vested interests,
respondents seem to be basically happy with their product offering, finding
it reliable and helpful but observe that it requires a bit of grunt and is 
expensive. Some consider it a bit dated and/or overarated. It's not clear 
in some cases whether the experiences were with a version supporting Ada95.
We need to decide whether to go with an IDE such as Rational's or to use 
a collection of high quality, but non-integrated tools. 

What we really need to know is (Ada95 specific) information on:

a) What other credible IDEs are there for Ada95 on the SGI platform?

b) How do they compare with Rational Apex/Rose in terms of:

   - Quality of the Ada tools (compiler, linker, debugger etc.)
   - Quality of the supporting tools (CM, Version Control, Change Control,
     documentation, OOAD, etc). How effective are they in helping to manage the 
     development process and in maximising productivity?
   - Support for interfacing to C/C++.
   - Support for Design by Contract.
   - State-of-the-art? How dated are they?
   - Cost.
   - Any others you consider important.

c) What collection of non-integrated (or partially integrated) tools, if any,
   would you recommend for SGI in preference to an IDE and why? Please address 
   the issues listed under b).


If you choose to respond by email, please direct it to Damian 
(damiano@syd.csa.com.au) and cc. me.


Thanks.
Don.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Don Harrison          donh at syd.csa.com.au

Re: IDE/Rational Apex experiences

[TB]

I've had quite a bit of experience using a collection of tools, and having an
in-house
guru write scripts to glue them all together. It became his full-time job. Any
change/upgrade of any of the tools required him to change/upgrade his work.
My feeling was that we should not be in the tools business. It's not our expertise,

and putting him back to the work we did do would essentially free his salary
toward integrated tools.  There are competitors to Rose but I have not found
one for Apex, certainly nothing to compare with Apex/Rose.  Having everything
integrated into one tool saves everyone time and money.

Don Harrison wrote:

> What we really need to know is (Ada95 specific) information on:
>
> a) What other credible IDEs are there for Ada95 on the SGI platform?
>
> b) How do they compare with Rational Apex/Rose in terms of:
>
>    - Quality of the Ada tools (compiler, linker, debugger etc.)
>    - Quality of the supporting tools (CM, Version Control, Change Control,
>      documentation, OOAD, etc). How effective are they in helping to manage the
>      development process and in maximising productivity?
>    - Support for interfacing to C/C++.
>    - Support for Design by Contract.
>    - State-of-the-art? How dated are they?
>    - Cost.
>    - Any others you consider important.
>
> c) What collection of non-integrated (or partially integrated) tools, if any,
>    would you recommend for SGI in preference to an IDE and why? Please address
>    the issues listed under b).