Re: AJPO is still clueless about the reality of DoD Ada rejection

[emery@grebyn.com (David Emery)]

In article <314e3103.370551677@news.interramp.com>, munck@acm.org wrote:

> On Fri, 15 Mar 1996 21:06:34 GMT, srctran@world.std.com (Gregory
> Aharonian) wrote:
> 
> > ... (like that COTS is compatible with the Ada Mandate - what a lie)
> 
> I'm beginning to see indications that the DoD fad for COTS software
> is fading, and I'll go out on a limb to predict that there will be an
> anti-COTS backlash by DoD within five years. Reason: COTS software
> may well require more maintenance than home-grown.  See, those
> greedy commercial folk find themselves competing with each 
> other in saturated markets with diminishing original sales of
> their packages. The solution is to churn out new releases as
> often as possible with plenty of spiffy new features that
> unfortunately tend to change the behavior of the old ones.
> Likewise the platform suppliers are upgrading their OSs and
> windowing systems, and even the hardware is changing enough
> to make two-generation-old machines worthless.
> 
> So your nice DoD application, with two or three COTS packages
> and running on MS Windows 3.0 on a 286, needs a HUGE and
> CONTINUOUS upgrading and re-distribution activity.  If it were
> all in good old stable Ada (ignoring the once-a-decade revisions),
> the compiler vendor would handle it all by upgrading the run-time
> and code generator.
> 
> So has anyone else seen this happening?
> 
> Bob Munck@acm.org

What I've seen happen even more often is when a system is constructed
by cobbling together a variety of COTS packages (including O.S., DBMS,
GUI builders, etc.)  Then you get bit by the "upgrades cycles", when
Version 1.2 of Product X is not compatable with Version 3.7 of Product Y.
Version 3.8 of Product Y is compatable with Version 1.2 of Product X,
but requires Version 5.6beta2 of Product Z, which requires Version 1.3c
of Version X to run, etc.

Basically, COTS integration turns out to come too close to a N! integration
problem over the life-cycle.

Maybe this is why "COTS" sounds like a German slang term for vomit...

               dave

p.s.  The "Open Systems" movement was one way to beat this problem.  
Unfortunately, it turns out to be harder to do good Open Systems development
than anyone thought.  The problem is teaching the programmers to "code
within the lines" defined by the standards.