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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Ada 95 Strategies Seminar
Date: 1997/01/26
Message-ID: <dewar.854292969@merv>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 212351468
references: <E4Dv9A.BE1@thomsoft.com>
organization: New York University
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-01-26T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Gerrie said

"Aonix is holding a free 1/2 day seminar to introduce Ada 95 and show
how it can help you to deply reliable, efficient and adaptable
applications.  We will present and demonstrate ObjectAda, the first
commercially available development environment for Ada 95."


Umm, you are allowed to say best if you like, that's fair game for
advertising. But "only" -- I don't think so, since GNAT has been
available for NT for some time with commercial support.

Object Ada and GNAT/NT are indeed very different systems. I am talking
now really about version 3.09, the version being tested by our customers,
which will shortly be available publically.

There are many reasons why might choose one or the other of these
two products. Some of the distinguishing features of GNAT are:

  1. It looks very similar to GNAT on other targets, so if you are using
     GNAT already, or need an Ada environment that is ported to a large
     number of targets, this may be of interest.

  2. NT GNAT looks very like Unix, both at the development level, and at
     the runtime level. This is of course a Good Thing and a Bad Thing at
     the same time. If you want something that is very Windows in style,
     then you may find this inconvenient. If on the other hand you are
     porting Unix applications, you may find this a real advantage.

  3. NT GNAT is, like other GNAT implementations, a full implementation of
     Ada 95, including all the annexes. If you need annex facilities, e.g.
     the information systems annex, then only GNAT can provide them.

  4. Like other versions of GNAT, NT GNAT is freely distributable and
     comes with full sources of both the runtime and the compiler itself.
     It has the same open systems design, allowing integration with Unix
     tools such as EMACS and GDB. It also fully supports cross-development
     from NT to other targets.

Sometimes competition leads to close duplication, in which case there is
still an advantage in that it prompts high quality. However, it seems to
me that competition is working at its best when, as in this case, it results
in a variety of products that meet different needs. Sometimes, when we talk
to potential customers, we steer them in the direction of Object Ada if it
seems to meet their needs better, and sometimes GNAT seems the clearly
better choice. Anyway, one of the nice things about the current competitive
market is that it is quite inexpensive to try out both solutions yourself
in your environment, and decide for yourself which is the better solution!

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

P.S. we are now expecting a public release of GNAT NT version 3.09 in the
next few days, so watch this space for an announcement. As you know we do
not generally give schedules for such public releases, so when we do it,
you can assume it is pretty definite!