Revised List of non-Defense Ada Projects

Revised List of non-Defense Ada Projects

[enterpoop.mit.edu!spool.mu.edu!darwin.sura.net!seas.gwu.edu!mfeldman]

Some Non-Defense Ada Applications
February 1993 

sources: Commercial Ada Users Working Group (CAUWG), 
AdaStrategies, Ada Anthology, published reports, 
vendor newsletters, etc.,

summarized by
Michael B. Feldman
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
202-994-5253 (voice)
202-994-5296 (fax)
mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu

Here is a list of non-defense Ada projects of which I am aware. 
Previous versions of this list were called "Non-Government"; this
one is called "Non-Defense". This is because the line between a
purely commercial project and a government one is increasingly
fuzzy, especially in Europe where the telecommunications industry
is quasi-governmental and governments often own stock in companies.

In the U.S., two very large government but non-defense Ada projects 
are the FAA Advanced Automation system for air traffic control, and the 
NASA Space Station Freedom software. The U.S. projects on the list below
are in addition to these two.

Any such list must have selection criteria. I prefer to focus
on actual, fielded applications, and therefore I have not
listed compilers, tools, reuse libraries, etc., of which there are
many coded in Ada. Software development tools are interesting, but
they are in a different category altogether from fielded systems.

The reader will note that many of these systems are in the aerospace
and telecommunications domains, both in the US and elsewhere.
Naturally this is not a coincidence; both domains require highly
reliable software, and many of the companies involved have built upon
their defense experience and chosen Ada for non-defense applications.
On the other hand, one can see that Ada is making inroads into
other industries, especially banking and securities. There are also
several "shrink-wrap" products for personal computers.

Readers are invited to correct or add entries and send them to me. 
The CAUWG chair, Ben Brosgol, can be reached at brosgol@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu 
or (617) 270-0030; Ralph Crafts, the editor of Ada Strategies, a commercial 
Ada-oriented newsletter, and Ada Anthology, a summary of newsletter articles, 
can be reached at sst@mcimail.com or (304) 725-6542. The Ada Information
Clearinghouse also keeps track of projects like these; reach them
at adainfo@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu or (800) AdaIC11.

USA     Beech Aircraft: many flight-control subsystems for Beechjet 400A
        and Beech Starship I (business jets) (see Rockwell)

USA	Boeing: 747-400 subsystem components of cockpit 
        displays, on-board maintenance systems, secondary 
        flight controls

USA     Boeing: almost all new software for 777 project

USA	Boneck Printing: job costing system, MS-DOS, Janus/Ada

USA	Coulter: medical electronics, including hematology analysis  

USA	Design Aids: commercial frame-by-frame videotape 
        editing system, MS-DOS, Janus/Ada

USA	Dimensional Media Systems: Doorway, hypertext 
        "information manager," MS-DOS, Meridian

USA	Dowell-Schlumberger: oil exploration simulation software, DEC

USA	General Electric/Weirton Steel: hot steel rolling 
        mill, multiple MicroVax-en, DEC Ada

USA	Genesis Software, Inc.: complete bill paying system, 
        Wang VS, Alsys; ported easily to VAX

USA	HP: hardware CAD system for internal use in chip development

USA	LDS Hospital: medical decision support system, 
        MS-DOS, Alsys (for NASA, but appears to 
        be commercial-type application)

USA	MAN Truck and Bus Company: multi-state payroll 
        system, MS-DOS, Janus/Ada (1982!)

USA	Motorola: cellular phone switch testing system, 
        Alsys and TeleSoft.

USA	PC-based programmer for embedded medical products.

USA	Reuters: transaction processing for Chicago 
        Mercantile Exchange, interfaces to commercial DBMS

USA	Rockwell: Fokker F100 Multi-Function Display System, Irvine Compilers

USA	Rockwell: Advanced Railroad Electronic System (real-
        time tracking and communications with trains using GPS)

USA     Rockwell: Many system components for commercial aircraft control

USA	Rollins Leasing (national leader in truck leasing 
        and vehicle management): integrated fuel management 
        system, MS-DOS, Janus/Ada.

USA     Shell Oil: geophysical seismic processing system (multiple targets) 

USA	Smiths (formerly Lear-Sigler): large embedded flight program for 
        Boeing 737 aircraft, XD-Ada.

USA     Trace Instruments: automatic test equipment for printed circuit boards

USA	Wells-Fargo Investment Advisors (WFNIA): real-time 
        investment database system, DEC/VAX.

Australia CSA: ground stations for an L-Band car-to-satellite telephone
        system in Australia.  Multiple sites, many processors linked in
        real-time; Sun SPARC, Sun SPARCengine; SunAda, VADSWorks.

Canada  Canadian Space Agency: satellite payload control system

Canada  Eyepoint, Inc.: Tunis Operating System in Ada

Europe  European Space Agency: ground station operator environment;
        nearly all space station software

Finland Nokia Information Systems: online banking systems, 
        uses Ada as its standard 
        programming language.

France	CMG: turnkey signal processing, industrial automation.

France	Euristic Systems: expert system to manage continuous 
        data acquisition, ApolloDomain network, Alsys.

France	GEC Alsthom: fully-committed to Ada for railroad 
        subsystems including French high-speed train (TGV) 
        network and Channel Tunnel.

France	SEMA Group: software to control nuclear power plant.

France	Strategies: CADWIN, PC-based CAD/CAM product, MS-DOS, Alsys.

France  SYSECA: new French air-traffic control system

France	Thomson-CSF: Air Traffic Control systems in 
        Copenhagen, Kenya, Pakistan, simulators in 
        Switzerland, Ireland, more ATC systems coming. 

France	TOTAL (oil company): computer-assisted extraction of 
        oil products, bare 68020, Alsys.

Germany	dSpace: tools to control fast systems such as hard 
        disks, vehicle suspensions, robots, Alsys.

Germany Eurocontrol: new Europe-wide air traffic control system

Holland	Royal Dutch Post and Telecom: PC-based system for 
        control and monitoring of public telecommunication 
        service, MS-DOS, Alsys.

Japan	Nippon Telephone and Telegraph: videotex 
        communication system, mobile communication system, 
        satellite communication system, database management 
        system; all commercially available. 

Norway  Norwegian Telecom: X.400 P7 implementation

Norway  TeleServe: fault-tolerant (of class highly-available),
        real-time SQL servers, for telecommunications applications.
        TeleSoft Ada.

Spain   CESEL: radar and flight plan processing for Spanish air-traffic
        control centers

Spain	Teice Control, SA: control system for 40 buildings 
        in industrial area of Madrid Airport (A/C, power 
        supply, fire: detection, etc.)

Sweden	ESAB: robotic welding stations for use in flexible 
        manufacturing systems, TeleSoft, Vax and 680x0

Sweden  SattControl: warehouse systems

Sweden  Swedish Telecom: system for supervision of private-branch 
        telephone exchanges (PBX's)

Sweden	Volvo: materials handling system (robotic parts 
        carts), TeleSoft.

Sweden	Color display element of hospital building control 
        and monitoring system: 1600 I/O channels, 200 
        dynamic color displays, lots of tasking, Meridian.

Sweden	SATT Control AB: warehouse systems

Sweden	Swedish Telecom: telephone switch controller (PABX), VAX.

Switzerland
        LinkVest: real-time stock exchange management system, VAX

Switzerland
        Union Bank: Operations Control System to manage distributed Vax-en.

UK	Avantek: Access Mac (lets MS DOS disk drives read, 
        write, format Macintosh disks), Janus/Ada.

UK	CORAL: DACMAN, simulation and data monitoring system 
        for auto engines, MS-DOS, Alsys, Meridian.

UK      Cray Systems Space Division: real-time training simulator for
        satellite controllers

UK	GeoMatrix: PC demographics research system, MS-DOS, Alsys.

UK	Orbitel Mobile Communications: cellular phone base station, Alsys.

UK	Process Plant and Chemicals: chemical process 
        control systems, MS-DOS, Alsys.

UK	Univ. of Southampton, modeling of deep-sea 
        ecosystem, IBM 3090, Alsys.

Re: Revised List of non-Defense Ada Projects

[Gregory Aharonian]

    This paucity of non-government Ada projects only reinforces the
message that Ada is very, very slowly making inroads into the 
non-Mandated world.  I am sure many inside the DoD celebrate this
list as a measure of success, which further delays any meaningful
reform of Ada software policies.

Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimization
-- 
**************************************************************************
Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimiztion
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178

Re: Revised List of non-Defense Ada Projects

[enterpoop.mit.edu!usc!howland.reston.ans.net!bogus.sura.net!darwin.sura.n]

In article <SRCTRAN.93Feb4181120@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory 
Aharonian) writes:
>    This paucity of non-government Ada projects only reinforces the
>message that Ada is very, very slowly making inroads into the 
>non-Mandated world.  I am sure many inside the DoD celebrate this
>list as a measure of success, which further delays any meaningful
>reform of Ada software policies.
>
Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch.

I have no idea whether the list is exhaustive. Neither do you.
It contains _a_ list of those projects of which I am aware. Can
you make a list of all the projects in other languages? Of course
not! Most companies would think it utterly uninteresting (or
maybe proprietary) what language they used. Only language evangelists
give a sh*t anyway (I can say that - I are one.)

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman
co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee

Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
School of Engineering and Applied Science
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
(202) 994-5253 (voice)
(202) 994-5296 (fax)
mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)

"Americans want the fruits of patience -- and they want them now."
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Revised List of non-Defense Ada Projects

[David Emery]

The interesting thing about the non-Defense Products list is that
many, if not most of them are high reliability projects.  This is true
of the Boeing 777 and the rest of the avionics software, as well as
the banking and financial systems.  If Ada were to be used on a subset
of all possible software systems, I'm happy to see it used on *these*
kinds of systems.  

				dave

Re: Revised List of non-Defense Ada Projects

[Gregory Aharonian]

>>    This paucity of non-government Ada projects only reinforces the
>>message that Ada is very, very slowly making inroads into the 
>>non-Mandated world.  I am sure many inside the DoD celebrate this
>>list as a measure of success, which further delays any meaningful
>>reform of Ada software policies.
>>
>Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch.
>
>I have no idea whether the list is exhaustive. Neither do you.
>It contains _a_ list of those projects of which I am aware. Can
>you make a list of all the projects in other languages? Of course not!

Actually Mike, for far less money than was wasted on the Mosemann
studies, I could make such a list of commercial projects by company,
language and year (which allow the DoD to accurately measure the rate
of Ada assimilation in the non-mandate world).  Since I have enough
information about government and university such efforts (or at least
enough raw data to safely statistically extrapolate ( :-)  ), I suppose
I could handle the commercial world.

By the way, is "kvetch" Yiddish for government waste?

Greg Aharonian

-- 
**************************************************************************
Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimiztion
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178