Ada Common Environment?

["Jon L. White" <jonl@harlequin.com> (by way of miller@cs.rochester.edu]

f.y.i.  So is this what standards efforts look like after ANSI?

Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 13:48:43 -0400
From: Artstewart@aol.com
Subject: Ada Common Environment
. . .

Please Contact:  Art Stewart (617) 641-1225
E-mail:  ArtStewart@aol.com

Ada Resource Association Begins Program to Standardize How Ada is Used and
Implemented with External Services

Coordination With Vendors Designed to Make Ada the Most Portable Language

(July 16, 1996 -- Columbus, OH)  The Ada Resource Association (ARA), the
professional trade association engaged in meeting the expanding requirements
of the worldwide Ada user community, has begun a program that will
standardize how Ada is used and implemented with external services.

The Association has formed the Ada Common Environment (ACE), which will
coordinate with Ada compiler and tools vendors to ensure that all Ada
implementations support standard external interfaces.  The ARA's intention is
to build on the new international standard for Ada95 -- which provides many
facilities for integrating multi-language software systems - with the goal of
making Ada the most portable language in software development.

The customer-focused program will enable third party vendors to build more
powerful tools and supplemental systems with the assurance that all Ada
systems can support them.  The new standards will benefit Ada software
products by increasing the range of platforms to which applications can be
ported.  The advantage to end users will be greater portability for their
code from compiler to compiler and target to target.

ACE expects to address a wide array of technical issues, with the initial
focus to include unifying the connections to CORBA (Common Object Request
Broker Architecture), X Windows/Motif, Win32, C++ interfacing, and POSIX
(Portable Operating System Interface).

ACE's technical output will be actual user-level documentation that will
enable organizations to move immediately into production.  The first such
documentation will be issued on September 30, 1996.  In some cases, where the
technical issues warrant it, the ARA will provide free software to implement
the standards and help third party vendors write portable Ada interfaces to
their products.

"The Ada language and tool sets have historically been used to produce high
quality custom software by offering strong technical advantages over other
languages," said Oliver Cole, Chairman of the ARA and President of OC
Systems. "The development of this industry consortium positions Ada as the
language of choice for commercial product development by providing
unparalleled protection for the user with any software that has a long life
cycle.  It will continue the steady and assured evolution of Ada that has
been proven with the existing large investment in Ada based software
applications.

"The ARA is right on track with the original intention of the Defense
Department's mandate for Ada and the transfer of technology project -- which
is to enable the new Ada standard to grow through the investment of
marketplace stakeholders," added Cole.  "We are at a particularly
advantageous point for industry interests to come together in that it is
early enough in the Ada95 life cycle to enable these issues of
standardization to take hold in a timely and efficient manner, with minimal
economic risk to the existing investments of Ada users.  The breadth of the
ARA vendor companies will equip us in effectively moving from drawing board
to implementation, and in making this a major focus of the ARA's activities."

The Ada Common Environment is comprised of technical representatives from
each of the ARA-member companies responsible for selling 95% of all Ada
compilers and tools. The companies are:  Ada Core Technologies, Inc.; DDC-I;
Intermetrics, Inc.; OC Systems; Rational Software Corporation; Thomson
Software Products; and Texas Instruments/Tartan, Inc.  Invitations are being
extended to other companies in the worldwide Ada community who are not
members of the ARA.

The Ada Resource Association -- a professional trade association -- is
actively engaged in meeting the expanding requirements of the worldwide Ada
user community.  Formed in 1989 as the Ada Software Alliance, its objective
is to promote and enhance the use of the Ada language, and associated
software engineering technology, in applications and programs that benefit
the customer.

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