Re: IDE/Rational Apex experiences

[nospam@thanks.com.au (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