1996 Ada-Belgium Seminar - Call for Participation

Call for Participation

1996 Ada-Belgium Seminar

Ada: the solution to integrate technologies

Friday, November 22, 1996
Eurocontrol, Brussels, Belgium

Organized with Assistance from
Eurocontrol CFMU, EC-DGXII, Thomson Software Products,
ACM SIGAda & AJPO

Ada-Belgium is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to promote the use in Belgium of the Ada programming language, the first ISO standardized object-oriented language.

Ada offers commercial developers an ideal blend of consistency, maturity, reliability, and performance. Ada supports the creativity and innovation of top technical talent while providing the discipline and engineering required for critical software systems. No other language is as uniquely qualified for building viable, cost-effective, long-term software solutions. It is a choice you need to consider.
From: "Ada - The Language For A Complex World" (Ada Resource Association)

We are pleased to announce that on Friday, November 22, 1996, Ada-Belgium organizes its 6th Annual Seminar at the premises of Eurocontrol in Brussels. Attendees will include industry, government and university representatives that are active and interested in Ada software development and management.

Highlights of the 1996 Ada-Belgium Seminar

Invited speaker is S. Tucker Taft, Chief Scientist in the Intermetrics Products and Technology Group and currently Technical Director developing Intermetrics' Ada 95 technology, called "AdaMagic".
Papers will be presented on the use of Ada in Belgian industrial, research, and teaching projects respectively.
Thanks to the assistance of DG XII at the European Commission, a printed copy of the Ada 95 Quality and Style: Guidelines for Professional Programmers will be given to each attendee.
Thanks to ACM SIGAda we can once more offer free copies of the latest Ada CD-ROM set from Walnut Creek (August 1996 Edition), i.e. 1.2 GB of Ada documentation, information, source code and ready-to-run tools and compilers from the Public Ada Library (PAL) on a 2 disk set (list price $39.95).
Thanks to the AJPO, we can offer free copies of the new Discovering Ada CD-ROM (November 1996 Edition), i.e. a multimedia CD-ROM of Ada training, produced under contract to the AJPO, by Intermetrics, Inc.
Discovering Ada covers all the basic points of Ada 95 through interactive lessons and voice-overs. It also includes positive testimonials on the benefits of Ada 95 from people who have used it. And last but not least, it contains new material about using Ada 95 and AppletMagic to create Java-compatible applets, in addition to a version of AppletMagic itself for Windows 95 (probable list price $99.00).

This is an event not to be missed! Do not delay to register!
(And be sure to request your FREE copy of the Ada CD-ROM set.)

More information is available below and via the 1996 Ada-Belgium Seminar Home Page.

Looking forward to meet many of you in Brussels.

Dirk Craeynest
Ada-Belgium Board
ada@belgium.eu.net

Invited speaker: Tucker Taft

Tucker Taft is Chief Scientist in the Intermetrics Products and Technology Group and is currently Technical Director developing Intermetrics' Ada 95 technology, called "AdaMagic". He is also leading development for Intermetrics' Ada 95-to-Java byte-code compiler, called "AppletMagic". (*)

From 1990 to 1995, Mr. Taft led the Ada 9X language design team, culminating in the February 1995 approval of Ada 95 as the first ISO standardized object-oriented programming language.

(*) A downloadable beta version of AppletMagic is available. See also the document "Twelve reasons to use Ada 95 for Java applet development" and the Web-page "Ada and WWW/Java".

Program

08:30 - 09:30   Registration

09:30 - 09:35   Welcome (Ada-Belgium)
09:35 - 10:00   Presentation of Eurocontrol CFMU
                (Peter Schmutz, head Software Section, Eurocontrol CFMU)
10:00 - 11:00   Exploiting Java Technology using Ada: an overview
                (Tucker Taft, Intermetrics)

11:00 - 11:30   Coffee break

11:30 - 13:00   Tutorial: the use of Ada for Java development
                (Tucker Taft, Intermetrics)

13:00 - 14:30   Lunch

14:30 - 15:00   Ada and Technologies Integration: a Real Size Experience
                (Philippe Waroquiers, Eurocontrol CFMU)
15:00 - 15:30   Polynomial Homotopy Continuation, a portable Ada software package
                (Jan Verschelde, K.U.Leuven)
15:30 - 16:00   Indexed sequential files in Ada: a didactical example
                (Marc A. Gobin, R.M.A.)

16:00 - 16:30   Coffee break

16:30 - 18:00   Ada and the external world: practical experiences
                (Tucker Taft, Intermetrics)

18:00           End of the Seminar

Abstracts

Presentation of Eurocontrol CFMU
(Peter Schmutz, head Software Section, Eurocontrol CFMU)

A general presentation of Eurocontrol, the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation, will be given: its main objectives, the role of the main divisions (CFMU, EEC, CRCO, EATCHIP, ...), and an overview of Ada usage in the different projects.

The main part of the presentation will provide more details about the Central Flow Management Unit (CFMU). The different subsystems of the CFMU project will be presented: Archive, Env, Strat, RTA/RCA, with special emphasis on TACT and IFPS, the most "critical" systems in terms of availability.

Exploiting Java Technology using Ada: an overview
(Tucker Taft, Intermetrics)

Ada 95's chief designer Tucker Taft describes how Ada exploits the emerging Java technology to respond to today's new Internet-based computing paradigm. This talk will explain how Ada 95 has been adapted to the Java "platform," achieving full interoperability between Ada 95 and Java code, and opening up the exciting new Internet-based computing paradigm to the reliability and productivity of Ada-based development.

Tutorial: the use of Ada for Java development
(Tucker Taft, Intermetrics)

This tutorial will introduce the attendees to writing Java-compatible applets in Ada 95.

Ada and Technologies Integration: a Real Size Experience
(Philippe Waroquiers, Eurocontrol CFMU)

The TACTICAL system is a system developed in Ada by Eurocontrol (CFMU) to help solving the air traffic congestion problem.

This presentation will first present the functionality and then the architecture of the system. Among others, the following points will be addressed: the distributed aspects of the system; interfacing with the external world (usage of TCP/IP, SNA, Motif, Oracle, ...); usage of some Unix features from Ada (e.g. shared memory).

Polynomial Homotopy Continuation, a portable Ada software package
(Jan Verschelde, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

The aim is to report on our experiences in building a high-quality software package for solving polynomial systems. The qualities of the program reside in the performance of the developed numerical methods and in the good software practice used in designing and implementing.

We will present the structure of our software, indicate its main features and show some applications. Besides that, we comment on the use of Ada in an applied math research project. Hereby we will describe the advantages of software engineering with Ada and list the difficulties we had to counter.

Jan Verschelde obtained his bachelor's degree in Computer Science at the K.U.Leuven in 1990. Since then he worked at the Computer Science Department on the development of methods and software for solving polynomial systems. In May 1996, he defended his Ph.D. thesis on `Homotopy Continuation Methods for Solving Polynomial Systems'. Currently he is post-doctoral researcher at the K.U.Leuven.

Indexed sequential files in Ada: a didactical example
(Marc A. Gobin, Royal Military Academy, Brussels)

As an introduction to a course on implementing data bases, the working of an indexed sequential file system is explained. Indexed sequential files are not included in the Ada reference manual, but can be (easily ?) implemented. To serve its purpose the implementation should be easy to explain, easy to use and as efficient as possible.

In this paper the main features of an indexed sequential package will be explained and the different choices and restrictions will be justified. The result is a quite efficient package for defining and using the traditional index sequential concepts.

Note: the entire package is available as freeware and can be obtained in source form from the Ada-Belgium WWW-server, section Free Ada Software provided by Belgian Ada users. The entire package is Ada83 compatible.

Ada and the external world: practical experiences
(Tucker Taft, Intermetrics)

We will report on the general approaches to building Ada 95 interfaces to non-Ada subsystems, for C, C++ and Java, and with some specific experiences relating to Windows 32, the Java AWT, and perhaps Microsoft Foundation Classes (if we have gotten that far by November). The aim is more to show the public what has been done already, not to be an "abstract" lecture on the basic Ada 95 features for interface programming.

Free Offers

Copies of the Walnut Creek Ada CD-ROM set, bought by Ada-Belgium through an agreement with the Special Interest Group on Ada of the ACM (ACM SIGAda), will be freely distributed to the first registered participants, up to the amount available. (Last year we could satisfy all demands.) This CD-ROM set includes a.o. ports to lots of platforms of the GNU Ada 95 compiler (GNAT).

Through an agreement with the Ada Joint Program Office (AJPO), copies of the new Discovering Ada CD-ROM will also be freely distributed. This multimedia CD-ROM of Ada training includes a.o. a version of Intermetrics' Ada 95-to-Java byte-code compiler AppletMagic for Windows 95.

Documentation

It has become a tradition that lots of interesting documents are distributed (freely) on the Seminar day.

For this 6th Annual Seminar, each participant will be offered, a.o., the Ada 95 Quality and Style: Guidelines for Professional Programmers, a valuable document for any serious (prospective) Ada user. Moreover, printed proceedings with papers of the presentations, copies of slides, and lots of additional documents and papers will be distributed.

Location

The Seminar takes place at the premises of Eurocontrol in Brussels (Haren), Belgium. Parking facilities are available.

Participation fee

4000 BEF for Ada-Belgium members
5000 BEF for non-members
Free registration for students, including Ph.D. students (without lunch)

The participation fee includes all coffee breaks and lunch, full documentation, and a free Walnut Creek Ada CD-ROM set and Discovering Ada CD-ROM (up to the amount available). Students can optionally pay for lunch.

The attached Registration Form has to be returned, signed, preferably before Monday November 18. Students may arrange registration through their institution.

Seminar secretariat

1996 Ada-Belgium Seminar Secretariat
c/o Eurocontrol - CFMU
Attn.: Ms. K. Van Hollebeke
Raketstraat 96
B-1130 Brussel
Belgium
Phone:  +32-2-729.96.51
Fax:    +32-2-729.90.22
E-mail: ada@belgium.eu.net
WWW:    http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~dirk/ada-belgium/

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our sponsors for their continued support of our activities: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven), Koninklijke Militaire School / Ecole Royale Militaire, (K.M.S./E.R.M.), OFFIS N.V./S.A. , Rational Software Corporation , Trasys N.V./S.A , and Université Libre de Bruxelles (U.L.B.).

Special thanks to Eurocontrol CFMU (Central Flow Management Unit of the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation), DG XII at the European Commission (Directorate-General XII: Science, Research and Development), Thomson Software Products (TSP), ACM/SIGAda (ACM Special Interest Group on the Ada programming language) and AJPO - AdaIC (Ada Joint Program Office - Ada Information Clearinghouse) for their support of this event.

Information on this and other Ada-Belgium events is available on the Internet at the Ada-Belgium World-Wide-Web pages and is updated regularly. Check out URL

     http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~dirk/ada-belgium/events/local.html

To the Ada-Belgium home page. To the 1996 Ada-Belgium Seminar Home Page.

Last update: 96/11/14.

Dirk Craeynest