Free Ada Compiler Could Breathe GNU Life Into 9X Software Market

Dateline: January 14, 1994

The GNU Ada 9X compiler promises to transfuse new blood into the Ada software market, bypassing some heavy development costs borne by early Ada vendors over the last decade.

Commercial players like Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Silicon Graphics could bundle the free compiler with their hardware to gain instant access to the Ada marketplace.

[Source: Menke, Susan M., "Free Ada Compiler Could Breathe Gnu Life Into 9X Software Market," Government Computer News, Vol. 13, No. 1, January 19, 1994.]

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Pentagon Aims for 60 Percent Commercial Code

Dateline: January 14, 1994

Forty percent of Defense software buys will be Ada and 60 percent will be commercial off-the-shelf software, Emmett Paige Jr., assistant secretary of Defense for command, control, communications and intelligence, told a group of federal IRM chiefs and vendors at the Industry Advisory Council's Executive Leadership Conference last month.

Paige said that by using COTS, "we can cut costs of development and time to deployment, and we can get benefits from the these systems earlier than before," but he emphasized "if new code is needed, it will be in Ada."

[Source: Minahan, Tim, "Pentagon Aims for 60 Percent Commercial Code," Government Computer News, Vol. 13, No. 1, January 10, 1994, pp. 38,39.]

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Rational's SEED Program Takes Off!

Dateline: January 14, 1994

Rational reports that more than twenty universities have signed up to participate in Rational's SEED program, a new educational program that makes Rational Apex available to colleges and universities worldwide at no charge.

Rational APEX includes an integrated Ada editor/browser, Ada compiler and debugger, system of configuration management and version control, Rational Subsystems (TM), industry-standard ASIS (Ada Semantic Interface Specification) programmatic interfaces, online help, hypertext-linked Ada reference manual, and full X/Motif-compliant user interface.

Universities interested in participating in Rational's SEED program should contact coordinator Shelly Richard at Rational at 408/496- 3857, or send e-mail to seed@rational.com.

[Source: "Rational's SEED Program Takes Off!" The Rational Watch, Winter 1993, Vol. 3, No. 4, p. 8.]