RE: Death by analogy Part 2 (was Re: is ada dead?)

["Robert C. Leif, Ph.D." <rleif@rleif.com>]

From: Bob Leif
To: Al Christians et al.
We built a commercial application with AdaSAGE under DOS (1). One major
problem with AdaSAGE was that it was that it did not use many of the
features of Ada 95; and to a large extent, it was Modula in Ada. However, it
was fast and reliable. From my experience with AdaSAGE, the combination of a
modern Ada database, such as Michael P. Card's FIRM, and an XML based GUI
could create some rich entrepreneurs.

I might note the AdaSAGE's and I believe Ada's biggest problem has been the
DoD's inability to  transfer Ada technology to the commercial sector.
Although US Defense contractors often have excellent technology, it appears,
at least in the case of Ada, that they have had no way to spin-off this
technology.

(1) R. C. Leif, R. Rios, M. C. Becker, C. K. Becker, J. T. Self, and S. B.
Leif, "The Creation of a Laboratory Instrument Quality Monitoring System
with AdaSAGE". Advanced Techniques in Analytical Cytology, Optical Diagnosis
of Living Cells and Biofluids, Ed. T. Askura, D. L. Farkas, R. C. Leif, A.
V. Priezzhev, , and B. J. Tromberg.. A. Katzir Progress in Biomedical Optics
Series Editor SPIE Proceedings Series, Vol. 2678, 232-239 (1996).

-----Original Message-----
From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org
[mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]On Behalf Of Al Christians
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 9:55 PM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: Death by analogy Part 2 (was Re: is ada dead?)


"Michael P. Card" wrote:
>
> OK, but realize here when you say "outside military and embedded
> systems" you are excluding the main domains for Ada. That would be
> akin to me asking you to show me a bunch of defense contractors that
> switched from Ada to Java/C++ for million-line plus real-time
> applications that succeeded and are still committed to Java/C++ today!

It's not like Ada wasn't supposed to be good for banal, hackneyed or
workaday applications.  It used to be popular amongst the European
banks, but have they stuck with it?  And there was Sage.  When Sage was
in Modula-2, it was used to develop a business-type database app that
was a success with many users (hundreds of public-sector organizations
???) across the US.  Then Sage was converted to AdaSage, appeared on
the Walnut Creek Ada CD, and was supposed to make it easy to develop
run-of-the-mill database applications in Ada.  What share of the
run-of-the-mill database application market does Ada now hold?  How
successful has AdaSage been vis-a-vis Modula-2 Sage?


Al