DOE and DoD Agencies Team Up
Working in partnership, the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Defense Information Systems Agency, are looking to commercialize Ada 95, the only internationally standardized object-oriented programming language. Spearheaded by DOE's Lockheed Martin Idaho Technologies (LMIT), the partnership is part of a broad effort mounted by the Ada Joint Program Office (AJPO) to stimulate widespread adoption of the Ada programming language within the government, academia, industrial and research communities.
The LMIT will soon release a Request for Information (RFI) in the Commerce Business Daily (CBD) for proposals to support the AJPO sponsored Ada Technology Insertion ProgramPartnership (ATIP-P). Through the ATIP-P, the AJPO expects to expand and strengthen the commercial supplier base of Ada products. The program is designed to exploit features of Ada 95 to provide open systems solutions in software environments. These partnerships will be joint ventures between Government and commercial firms to develop software products. The AJPO expects proposing organizations to equally share funding (50/50) development of the products.
This program will provide shared funding for 8-10 proposals and provide approximately $2 million, to facilitate achievement of the ATIP-P objectives. The RFI will request offers to propose development of Ada 95 technologies for bindings, commonly used tools, development libraries, visual work space and computer based training tools.
DOE/LMIT was chosen to administer the program because of their past experience with awarding cost sharing contracts with industry and for their background using the Ada programming language.
Organizations interested in receiving a copy of the CBD announcement should contact Doug Colonel, phone: 208/526- 0204, fax: 307/734-1663 or e-mail: "Charles D. Colonel"<Doug@sage.inel.gov
SOURCE:
Doug Colonel, Lockheed Martin Idaho Technologies.
FEDERAL COMPUTER WEEK FEATURES Ada ATIP-P ARTICLE
The August 21, 1995 issue of Federal Computer Week featured an article on the Ada Technology Insertion ProgramPartnership (ATIP-P). The article acknowledged the DoD and DOE's efforts to commercialize the Ada programming language.
Al Wynn, a program manager at the Idaho National engineering Laboratory (INEL), said the program is meant "to get more tools out there to support the Ada language. Other languages have an abundance of software support tools, and Ada just doesn't have that yet. This is an effort to get this going."
By sharing funding for the development of marketable tools, the government will get the (commercial) off-the-shelf tools it needs to support its programs while also showing Ada to be a viable market for tools vendors, the article stated. "The resulting product will be COTS products," said Gary Shupe, project manager at AJPO. "At the same time, the government gets a return on its investment, depending on how creative the offeror is in their proposal."
The article also discussed the roles to be played by the DoD and INEL as well as Ada history within the DoD.
SOURCE:
Monroe, John Stein and Elizabeth Sikorovsky. "DoD, DOE
Push Commercial Ada." Federal Computer Week. 21
August 1995: 8,18.
FCW is published by FCW Group Inc., 3110 Fairview Park Dr., Falls Church, VA 22042-4599; 703/876-5100.
Ada COLUMN FEATURED IN JOOP
"Satisfying Software Requirements Extensions," is the second Ada article by Richard Riehle, AdaWorks Software Engineering, to be featured in Journal of Object-Oriented Programming (JOOP). Riehle discusses the background of software maintenance, the limits of inheritance, child units, a review of the Ada package, the HLU diagram and the role of private children.
SOURCE:
Riehle, Richard. "Satisfying Software Requirements
Extensions." Journal of Object Oriented Programming.
September 1995: 78-84.
Richard Riehle can be reached at AdaWorks Software Engineering, 2555 Park Blvd., Ste. 27, Palo Alto, CA 94306; (v) 415/328-1815, (f) 415/328-1112; e-mail: adaworks@netcom.com.