DISA DIRECTOR GUNG-HO FOR Ada!
The newly appointed director of DISA is positive about the future of Ada! Lt. Gen. Albert Edmonds, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, stressed his continued support for Ada and its software engineering capabilities at the DoD Database Colloquium in San Diego, Calif.
Edmonds said he plans to find some projects that lend themselves to software engineering discipline and use them as Ada test platforms. "I don't know any other way to do it, but to get on with it," he said.
He stressed that the projects are not intended to be "shootouts," pitting Ada against the two other popular DoD languages, C and C++. Instead, he wants the projects to generate scientific results detailing the benefits of Ada.
Edmonds added that the debates regarding the Ada mandate could go on forever until the DoD produces scientific results that show why Ada is a sound engineering approach to software development. He said he wants DISA to play a role in formulating these scientific findings.
[Source: Endoso, Joyce. "Ada Mandate Alive, Kicking," Government Computer News. Vol.13, No.22, October 3, 1994.]
Ada HELPS EUROPE CLEAR THE AIR
The European Community is revamping its air-traffic safety systems and Ada is playing a major role. Eurocontrol, an independent European organization which oversees air navigation safety, is working to upgrade air-traffic navigation systems throughout Europe.
At the Eurocontrol Experimental Center south of Paris, developers have adopted the Ada programming language for two projects: RAMS (Re-organized ATC Mathematical Simulator) and the Airborne Collision Avoidance System (ACAS). The two projects combined consist of over 140,000 lines of Ada code.
For the design phase, Eurocontrol used the Booch method and Rational Rose. By using object-oriented design approach, developers were able to take full advantage of the many features and benefits of the Ada language, including abstraction and information hiding.
The primary reason for selecting an iterative, object-oriented approach were maintainability, flexibility and reusability of the software over its lifetime, which Eurocontrol estimates to be from 12 to 15 years.
[Source: "Flying Object: European Air Navigation System Gets Overhaul," Rational Watch. Summer 1994.]
Intel Corp. and Tartan Inc. have teamed to support the development of Ada programming tools for military-qualified Intel architecture processors. The cooperative effort will give project teams using high-performance Intel architecture processors an efficient developing and debugging environment for real-time embedded Ada applications.
As part of the collaboration, Tartan will retarget its Ada system to Intel architecture processors including the i486, DX, DX2, IntelDX4 and Pentium. Tartan Ada for Intel processors will be available in the second quarter of 1995.
The Tartan compiler will provide several Ada 9X features including preliminary support for protected types and child libraries, a full Ada 9X parser and some support for realtime annex features including priority queuing.
[Source: "Intel, Tartan Developing Ada System for Intel Architecture," Military and Aerospace Electronics. Vol. 5, No. 11. October 1994.]