Ada Market Entails at Least a $5.6 Billion Investment,
Say Ada Resource Association-Sponsored Survey Respondees
BELMONT, MASS. [Sept. 12, 2005]--The Ada market is healthy, with a total investment of at least
$5.6 billion in Europe and North America, according to an industry survey sponsored by the Ada
Resource Association (ARA). The ARA, an international nonprofit organization, maintains the Ada
Information Clearinghouse and comprises principal suppliers of Ada development environments and tools:
AdaCore, IBM
Rational Software, Praxis Critical Systems,
and SofCheck.
The survey asked about both current Ada usage and familiarity with or
plans for Ada 2005. Altogether, 188 responses
were returned on the ARA website during May and early June this year, and additional data were
derived from individual interviews. The survey was completed by software developers from North
America, Australia, Korea, and almost every country
in Europe.
The main results on Ada usage, presented at the Ada Europe conference in York, England,
in June, can be summarized as follows:
- Around 322 million lines of Ada code (LOAC) are in software that is either still in development
or has been completed, representing a reported (and conservatively-estimated) value of around $5.6 billion.
- The prices for these systems also cover a wide range. At one
extreme, several projects undertaken by volunteers or hobbyists showed zero as their cost. And
at the other end of the spectrum, a response for one of the major system developments reported
a cost of $2 billion.
- The projects represent a variety of
applications and stages of development. (In the table below, the percentages
add up to more than 100% since some respondents checked off more than one
category, such as "fielded" and "maintenance"):
Project type |
Embedded systems: |
44 |
21% |
Command & Control: |
32 |
17% |
Other Types: |
32 |
17% |
Tools: |
30 |
16% |
Simulation Projects: |
30 |
16% |
Graphics: |
21 |
11% |
Libraries: |
11 |
6% |
IT Projects: |
7 |
4% |
Project Stage |
Planning: |
8 |
4% |
Development: |
78 |
41% |
Complete: |
31 |
16% |
Fielded: |
54 |
29% |
Maintenance: |
56 |
30% |
Other stage: |
13 |
7% |
Outside the Defense/Aerospace Box
Although Ada's traditional stronghold has been in the defense/aerospace industry,
the responses to the survey show that the language has a much broader appeal. This is likely due to Ada's
intrinsic merit in helping produce reliable software, and to the availability of quality Ada compilers and tools. Some of the
more interesting application areas include:
- Accounting
- Banking & Finances
- Bible Studies
- Book Title Image Matching
- Commercial Imaging
- Court Workflow
- Currency Trading
- Database Tools
- DNA Analysis
- Electronic Voting Machine
- Industrial Control
- Interlingual Machine Translator
- Internet Security
- Medical Devices & Testing
- Neuroscience Research
- Photonic Materials Research
- Security Assessment
- Semiconductor Factory
- Small Office Applications
- Spellcheck
- Telecommunications
- Tension Structure Analysis
- Warehouse Management/Control
Understanding and Using the New Ada Standard Features
Besides asking about ongoing projects, the survey collected data about respondents' acquaintance with,
and usage plans for, features that are being added to the upcoming Ada standard. The survey offered six possible answers for
each feature, from "Unaware" and "Do not understand" to "Frequently use." The following specific features were listed:
"limited with"; interfaces; scheduling improvements; the container library; nested extensions; prefixed views;
directories/environment/ calendar packages; enhanced anonymous access types; limited aggregates and functions; overriding indicators;
Ravenscar; expanded Unicode support. A roughly one line description was given of each.
Since tutorial or rationale material on Ada 2005 has only recently been made available to the general Ada community,
and since most of the information available has been instead very technical, a high degree of familiarity with the new features would have
been somewhat surprising. The actual results -- on average, about 34% of the respondents said that they either were unaware of a feature,
didn't understand it, or didn't answer the question -- is probably better than expected and reflects a high degree of interest in the new
language
New Ada Standard Features Likely to be Used
The best understood new features were the containers library and the other
new packages, while the least understood feature was overriding indicators. The description in the
question didn't explain their use, unlike most of the other features, which might
have explained respondents' confusion.
Those features that respondents said they would never use proved to be highly specialized.
Further, if a feature was understood, it would tend to be used: on average, more than 80% of the users who understood a feature
said that they would use it at least occasionally. An interesting counterexample was the Ravenscar Profile: 32% of the respondents
that understood that feature said that they would never use it. This may seem surprising, since the Ravenscar profile is generally
regarded as one of Ada's major strengths for high-integrity applications. But most of the survey's respondents are working on systems
that, although requiring high reliability, are not safety-critical. The developers can thus use the full Ada language rather than a
specialized subset.
The feature most likely to be used, by developers who indicated an understanding of the feature, is the new standard packages
(for directories /environment variables/calendar), followed by the containers library, prefixed views, and overriding indicators.
In reviewing the survey data, Randy Brukardt, editor of the new ISO Ada standard and long-time member
of the Ada Rapporteur Group (ARG), observed: "All-in-all, I would say these results validate the ARG's effort in choosing how to update the
language. The survey responses showed a higher degree of familiarity with the features than we had expected, and it is especially interesting
that the new libraries are perceived as the most useful addition. With the forthcoming Rationale and other articles, the Ada community will
be able to learn more about what the new standard will offer."
For those who did not get an opportunity to fill it out, the
survey is still available. Updates from new surveys
and individual interviews will be posted in the future in a news article and to the Ada News group, which you can
sign up for by emailing
listserv@adaic.com and putting "Subscribe announce" in the subject line.
For more details, please see http://www.adaic.org/site/newslist.html
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