According to the Oct. 17 issue of Government Computer News, plans are underway to transform the Defense Information Systems Agency's (DISA's) Center for Information Management (CIM) into a center of software excellence.
The CIM currently oversees DoD's data-administration program, software-reuse initiative, and the Ada Joint Program Office.
While no public announcement has been made, GCN said the shift was hinted at in recent remarks by DISA Director Lt Gen Albert Edmonds. Edmonds said he wanted a DISA project to prove the benefits of Ada and sound software engineering in building software.
[Source: "News Roundup", Government Computer News, Oct. 17, 1994]
Government Computer News has reported that the Army expects by December to have developed a prototype application for it Sustaining Base Information Services (SBIS). The effort is using early Ada 9X compilers and tools, and is taking place at the Army Missile Command's Corporate Information Center Technology Development Laboratory at Redstone Arsenal, Ala.
The prototype is to provide directors of information management with a graphical representation of their information-technology inventory -- giving locations, and specific users. It will run on an IBM Corp. RS/6000 supplied by Loral Federal Systems Group.
The Missile Command Lab will use the GNU Ada Translator (GNAT) Ada 9X compiler, developed at New York University, and widely distributed at no charge to the public over the Internet. The lab has begun evaluating some development tools, such as those from Rational, but has not yet reached a decision on what tools might be available and useful for the project.
Once the prototype is delivered, the SBIS team and SBIS contractor Loral will review the lab's approach and determine whether they can adopt the development technology.
The prototype application is intended to be part of the Infrastructure Computer Aided Design and Drafting System (ICADDS). This will be one of eight modules in the Director of Information Management MIS (DOIMMIS) -- which will provide automated tools to directors of information management worldwide. With the ICADDS applications, they will be able to view their entire installation "down to the desktop".
[Source: Joyce Endoso, "Tryout of Ada 9X under way at Army Missile Command", Government Computer News, Oct. 17, 1994]
DoD systems developers are going to be seeing the results of two software-industry giants joining forces to bring Ada software-engineering products to the market.
The effort comes from a recent agreement between Rational Software Corp. and Digital Equipment Corp. Under the agreement, Rational will be DEC's preferred supplier of Ada software-development tools the DEC Alpha AXP workstations and servers. In turn, the AXP will be Rational's platform for future development and enhancement of it Ada tools.
Rational's new version of its Apex development environment will be available first on the Alpha AXP OSF/1 platform, enhanced for that architecture.
Government Computer News reported industry sources as saying that the DEC-Rational agreement will allow "both to remain competitive because of the large installed base of DEC hardware and Rational Ada development products."
[Source: Joyce Endoso, "Industry titans DEC and Rational join forces to market Ada products", Government Computer News, Oct. 17, 1994]
THE AN/BSY-2 AND SEAWOLF-CLASS SUBMARINE ARE CREATING WAVES FOR Ada!
The October issue of Defense Electronics has featured an Ada success story entitled, "Going to Sea With Ada." It documents the advantages and lessons learned about the Ada programming language in large embedded applications. Martin Marietta Ocean, Radar and Sensor Systems (OR&SS), (Syracuse, N.Y.), is developing a large Ada-based Submarine Combat System (SCS), the AN/BSY-2 and a subset, the AN/BQG-5, and believes that Ada is critical to the success of large, extensive, embedded systems.
The AN/BSY-2 SCS program began full scale development in 1988, and when completed in 1995, will comprise 120 different computer programs. These programs will contain more than three million lines of unique Ada code, with code reuse bringing the total AN/BSY-2 software to nearly five million Source Lines of Code (SLOC). A subset of the AN/BSY-2 SCS is the AN/BQG-5 (WAA) sensor system for the SSN 688 Seawolf-class submarine, which has been delivered to the U.S. Navy and has successfully completed performance evaluation. The AN/BQG-5, totalling more than one million SLOC, is operational, and is considered one of the best passive sonar systems in the Navy's submarine force.
[Source: Farnham, F. Gregory and Kevin J. McSweeney, "Going to Sea With Ada," Defense Electronics, October 1994, Vol. 26, No. 10, pp.25-28]
Ada COMPILER FOR WINDOWS NT AVAILABLE *****************************************************************| DATELINE: October 21, 1994
A complete compilation system for developing Ada applications on standard PC platforms is now available. It is VADS for Windows NT, the latest addition to the VADS family of compilers and cross-compilers that run on a variety of open-systems host and target platforms, offered by Rational Software Corporation.
"VADS for Windows NT brings the power of a full UNIX-based Ada development environment to the PC," said Ben Priest, marketing manager at Rational. "With VADS for Windows NT, developers can take advantage of the increasing power of personal computers, while using Ada to cope with complex software development for NT and Win32. With our Win32 support, users can build reliable, highquality Ada applications that run under standard Windows 3.1."
For more information contact:
Rational Software Corporation
2800 San Tomas Expressway
Santa Clara, CA 95051-0951
Tel. (408) 496-3600 or (800) RAT-1212
Fax (408) 496-3636
E-mail product_info@rational.com
[Source: Rational News Release, October 17, 1994]
NEW DDC-I 680x0 BOARD PORTS FOR Ada PRODUCT LINE
DDC-I has announced its support for Motorola's MVME 162 and MVME 167 boards, and Aitech Defense Systems' C740 board, the latest in a series of DDC-I 680x0 board ports for their Ada product line.
The MVME 162 and 167 series of embedded controllers allow the systems designer to select a controller that suits his needs. Both are based on M68040 and offer optional ethernet, VME-bus and SCSI interface. The 162 series also offers Industry Pack Interface such that custom hardware may be added to the system. The boards are available in various memory configurations.
The C740 board from Aitech is also based on M68040 and contains a MIL-STD 1553B interface which provides dual redundant BC, RT and MT protocol logic, and an AMD 7990 ethernet controller.
Designed specifically for safety critical applications, the DDC-I Ada Compiler System targeting MC68030 and MC68040 (DACS- 680x0) is validated in both basic and secure mode. The protection model has the objectives of controlling and restructuring task interaction. The standard protection given by the Ada language is provided in basic mode, while the secure mode allows you to define the rights and privileges of packages and tasks placed into classes. This allows applications to guarantee reliability by disallowing operations which may be semantically correct, but would compromise the security and operation of the application.
[Source: DDC-I news release]