On July 27, 1994, the Type Commander Readiness Management System (TRMS) won the category of Best Object-Based Application Developed Using Non-Object Tools at the Object World Conference in San Francisco. Developed by the Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station LANT (NCTAMS LANT), the system defeated Pacific Bell, the other finalist, and 60 other contenders in the competition. TRMS was a successful re-engineering of a COBOL legacy system into a state-of-the-art, object based Ada application. The winning Ada team used the AdaSAGE development environment to re-engineer a system of 2,000 programs and 2.8 million lines of Cobol code. This was their first project, and they completed it on-time and within budget.

TRMS and the Ada Application

TRMS is a multi-faceted and comprehensive information system serving the diverse information needs of the six Navy Type Commander staffs. The system's modules support the business areas of combat readiness, casualty reporting, aviation maintenance, logistics, inspections and training.TRMS was originally a legacy system, the Type Commander Headquarters Automated Information System (THAIS). The reason for the re-engineering of THAIS into TRMS was a combination of information engineering, rapid prototyping and building upon the existing system and its documented backlog of change requests. TRMS is a distributed application, written in Ada '83, and runs in a client server PC LAN environment. It consists of over 150,000 lines of Ada code. Of these lines of code, approximately 40% are calls into AdaSAGE, which represent an estimated 150,000 additional lines of Ada code. Using AdaSAGE allows developers to apply some object-oriented techniques to Ada '83. Internal reusable libraries represent approximately 9% of the application. NCTAMS LANT contributed its library of reusable Ada code components to the Navy reuse center (over 12,000 lines of code).

Ada Advantages

After being successfully fielded at the six Navy Type Commanders, TRMS has exhibited many advantages over the original COBOL THAIS system:

• The cost of equipping the six sites with server hardware equated to the cost of maintaining the THAIS system for just one year.

• The 2.8 million lines of COBOL code have been reduced to just 245,000 lines of Ada code.

• The station has been able to reduce its TRMS maintenance staff from 30 to 12 engineers.

• As a LAN based system, TRMS is available to more staff members than was possible with the THAIS system.

• As a PC based product, TRMS can be used by any activity that has a PC or PC LAN

• The usefulness of the system has expanded beyond its original customer base thereby further leveraging the investment in its development.

• TRMS Ada components have been reused in other development projects. Reusing one major component can save approximately $50K in development cost.

The project has proven to be a cost effective alternative to the continued maintenance of the legacy system. The object-based nature of the Ada language, combined with the object-oriented approach of the Ada/AdaSAGE development environment have helped make software development easier and more cost effective. The benefits of the object based/object oriented approach to this project will continue to multiply as these same methods are applied to future development projects.For further information, contact:

Mike Shumate
Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station
LANT9456 Fourth Ave., Suite 200
Norfolk, VA 23511-2199
Tel: 804-444-3873
Fax: 804-444-2835