Professional Ada for PC

Information on Ada APSEs for Windows and Windows NT

My message and an overview of the responses follows. I have removed all names and e-mail addresses (except of people giving information on their companies products).

Last updated on Mon Sep 19 1994:

• Ada 9X product info from Objective Interface Systems, Inc.
• VADSself for NT/386/486/Pentium from Rational Software Corporation

From dirk Mon Sep 12 09:48:15 1994
Subject: Looking for prof. 9X on PC
To: team-ada@acm.org (Team Ada list)
Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 09:48:15 +0200 (MET DST)

I recently received the following request:

= I'm developing Telecom applications running on DOS, Windows
= and Windows NT and I'm currently looking for a professional
= Ada (and/or Ada9X) APSE running on PC especially for Windows
= and NT.
=
= [...] which are the best products currently available or in
= the Beta Testing phase?

Not being very familiar with the platforms mentioned, I would appreciate
it if other Teamers could help me to collect some information.

I had the impression that Alsys was generally considered to be (one of)
the best (cfr. messages on comp.lang.ada and several mailing lists).
Plus, a migration product from Ada 83 to 9X seems to be available now.

Additional information, corrections, opinions, etc. are welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Dirk Craeynest     (Team Ada)
Ada-Belgium Newsletter Editor     | e-mail: Dirk.Craeynest@cs.kuleuven.ac.be
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven    |         dirk@source.asset.com
Department of Computer Science    | phone:  ++32(0)16-201015 x3575
Celestijnenlaan 200 A             | fax:    ++32(0)16-205308
B-3001 Leuven (Heverlee), Belgium | http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~dirk



From: Mo Bjornestad 
Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 08:20:16 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Looking for prof. 9X on PC

Dick,

We offer graphical tools for Requirements Analysis, Design, and Detailed
Design.  You can pick from 30+ methods we support for analysis and
design, and we offer Buhr 84 and Buhr 90 for detailed design, from which
we can generate Ada 83 bodies and specs.

We will be adding an Ada 94 code generator in the next few months (very
little demand yet) which will be driven from the abstract model, meaning
from the semantic model created from the analysis and design steps, not
from the concrete or implementation model created from detailed design.

We still recommend a code management environment.  I would be interested
to learn what is recommended to you.

Mo

PS Alittle information on our tools follows:

OBJECTMAKER * PRODUCT FAMILY

ObjectMaker by Mark V Systems: With the ObjectMaker CASE Tool you can
model your application requirements and design in one or more of the
most popular notations.  ObjectMaker supports more than 30 of the most
popular analysis and design notations for software engineering and
allows you to mix and match notations to build a single model of your
software application.  You can choose the notations and the depth of
detail your application requires.  ObjectMaker also offers support for
detailed design, code generation and document generation for
construction, delivery and maintenance phases.  Reverse Engineering
tools offer you the opportunity to re-engineer applications, reuse
legacy code and incorporate commercially available components into your
model for design, construction and maintenance.  Contact ObjectMaker
marketing at 818 995 7671, fax 818 995 4267, or objectmaker@markv.com.

ObjectMaker TDK by Mark V Systems: The ObjectMaker Tool Development Kit
(TDK) offers developers, integrators, OEMs, consultants, and
methodologists the opportunity to customize methods, notations, syntax
rules, syntax checking, semantic specification and repository capture of
all semantics, and other information and relationships important to your
process and problem space.  The TDK provides direct access to the rules
(predicate logic) that create, control, and pre- and post-condition all
tool behavior, and manage all repository navigation and iteration.  The
TDK offers you the possibility of growing your tool and method support
as your organization and process grows and matures.  This is more than
just being able to use the next method that comes along, more than
mixing and matching notations to create the multiple views necessary for
today's problems.  It means you can add to the notation you select, add
to the semantics, add to the checking, add to the code generation, and
more as you gain experience and understand that what you need is beyond
what the published methods offer.  Published methods, especially the
object oriented methods, are good starting points.  Your process will
mature past the published methods.  You will need to recognize and
capture the information and relationships important for your problem
space.  The ObjectMaker TDK provides tailorable support which enables
you to develop and extend your own methods.  The TDK gives you the
opportunity to use and reuse your repository contents, your application
models, your component libraries by giving you the facilities for data
and control integration with other life cycle tools.  Contact
ObjectMaker marketing at 818 995 7671, fax 818 995 4267, or
objectmaker@markv.com.

MethodMaker (R) by Mark V Systems: MethodMaker is an exciting new
extension to the ObjectMaker family which allows rapid development of
new method notations.  MethodMaker also allows the user to modify and
extend existing ObjectMaker and ProcessMaker method support to meet
project and organization requirements.  The user can easily build or
modify the tool support for a method by editing a diagram set.  The new,
or further prototyped method is self documented by the defining diagram
set, and can be regenerated at any time to take advantage of new
ObjectMaker features and capabilities.  MethodMaker, with simple
diagrams and fill in forms allows you to specify and modify the tool
support for menus, notations, syntax checking, semantics specification
and repository capture of semantics and other information and
relationships.  All ObjectMaker CASE Tool functionality is inherited.
Contact MethodMaker marketing at 818 995 7671, fax 818 995 4267 or
methodmaker@markv.com.

ProcessMaker (R) by Mark V Systems: ProcessMaker is a specialized
modeling tool which is coupled to an underlying semantics repository and
code/text generator.  ProcessMaker supports many popular process diagram
notations and provides the user the capability to easily develop a
graphic representation of a process.  Users needing to capture process
models, work flow models or enterprise models for process improvement,
analysis, measurement, reuse, re- engineering or enactment have the
choice of using multiple notations to create the views necessary for
these tasks.  ProcessMaker will generate output to a variety of process
enactment products.  Additional process modeling notations, and other
techniques can be added to ProcessMaker using MethodMaker and
ObjectMaker TDK tools described above.  More than 15 notations are
supported at this time including the popular IDEF/IDEF1x, ProNet,
Process Decision Program Charts, Process Breakdown Structure Charts, YPL
and Petri Nets.  Contact ProcessMaker marketing at 818 995 7671, fax 818
995 4267 or processmaker@markv.com.

WHY CHOOSE THE OBJECTMAKER FAMILY OF PRODUCTS?

Comprehensive Vision

Mark V Systems has a comprehensive vision for supporting the software
engineering process.  In this regard we stand ahead of most companies in
terms of the breadth and depth of vision.  We are building foundation
technology to support all roles and activities in the software
engineering process.  We deliver today the core technology to support
this vision.

Mark V will continue to add core technology while providing the larger
community of users, consultants, integrators and OEMs the opportunity to
add to the services and functionality needed to support the rapid
evolution in software engineering concepts.  This rapid evolution
impacts the process, methods, techniques and tools needed by developers.
The Mark V vision recognizes the rate of change will increase.  The Mark
V architecture provides for meeting this change and protecting the
developer's investment while giving him the opportunity to take
advantage of the newest concepts.

Comprehensive Architecture

Starting in 1985 Mark V Systems built the first commercial tools
designed to plug-and-play with framework technology (PCTE, AD/Cycle,
Cohesion, CAIS-A).  These tools, a general purpose drawing tool, a code
generator and a code to semantic model reverse engineering tool, were
completed by 1988.  However, no framework technology services adequate
for our tools existed in the commercial marketplace in 1988.

In 1989-1992 we extended our architecture to include framework
technology services with an entity, relationship, attribute (ERA) based
fine-grain repository.  Driven by a powerful predicate logic rule
language, repository services include PCTE-like navigation, CAIS-A-like
iteration, support for multiple extensible schema, and support for tool
data integration.  These features use commercial ASCII files for
persistent storage and are implemented through an isolation layer.  The
family of tools using Mark V services directly or by way of data or
control integration can be delivered on the Mark V repository, or can be
delivered on other commercial framework or OODB products.  The Mark V
schema can be re- hosted to the target framework or OODB, or the tools
can be re- targeted to any future standard schema or the customer's
schema of choice.  ObjectMaker's architecture makes it practical to
support multiple tool configurations and to evolve those configurations
over time.

Comprehensive Fundamentals

In the same period, 1989 to 1992, decisions were taken to create a meta
tool.  Tool functionality has been moving from the kernel to accessible,
customizable predicate logic.  The meta tool, the ObjectMaker TDK, is
the most comprehensive and powerful technology available in the market.
To make this technology accessible additional provisions were made for a
graphical interface to the meta technology, and this tool, a meta method
tool is now shipping as MethodMaker.

Provisions were also made for building process enactment capabilities
into ObjectMaker.  We reserved the name ProcessMaker for the tool to be
used to model process and work flow and to generate templates and
scripts for other enactment tools.  ProcessMaker is shipping today and
offers more than 15 notations to support process modeling, and soon will
generate scripts to populate existing commercial enactment tools.
ProcessMaker inherits the Mark V product vision and architecture.
Process modeling, process improvement, and process engineering reuse are
critical to our industry.

The Mark V architecture can directly support reuse.  ObjectMaker is
already integrated with the DOD/CIM Defense Software Reuse System and
the Westinghouse ReUse system, a large internal system which
Westinghouse has commercialized.  We will integrate with more reuse
tools because we believe reuse will provide the return on investment and
the technology we need to build the complex systems of the future.
ObjectMaker will, in late- 1994, deliver a fully integrated reuse
mechanism for cataloging and retrieving reusable legacy code, output
from other tools such as GUI builders, and commercial components
purchased from the market.  ObjectMaker's reuse tools will help
individual developers manage and reuse their personal store of reusable
models and model fragments (code).  The organization will also be able
to find and reuse modules, components and code identified at the
requirement level, or at any level of specification in-between.

Open Ended Technology

The ObjectMaker Product Family is designed to be extended to fulfill the
Mark V vision.  Some services still in the kernel will move out of the
kernel, becoming accessible to tool developers.  Icon Generator is an
example.  In the past icons were added by making changes to the kernel.
Today the drawing and icon generation services are externalized.  Future
MethodMaker and ObjectMaker TDK users will be able to generate smarter
icons to use with new or extended methods.

ObjectMaker reverse engineering technology is also being externalized.
These new facilities, first shipped in December 1993, support reverse
engineering and re-engineering tasks with accessible technology.  An
annotated parse tree from any procedural language parser can be fit to
our transformation engine.  The engine will populate an implementation
level schema suitable for maintenance, identifying reusable components,
and for restructuring and re-engineering an application.  Code can be
generated in the same or another target language.

Mark V Systems believes externalized, open, customizable technology is
required because tool companies can not anticipate the changes in the
industry.  Tool companies can not and should not be expected to
understand and meet the specific real and evolving needs of individual
application developers in any problem domain, and certainly not in
hundreds of problem domains.

We believe experts working closer to individual problems understand what
is needed and how to support the special requirements of any project.
The concepts, process, methods, notations, languages, development
environments and deployment environments, the level of skills and
training of the staff all vary, and all will mature over time.  Needs
change as we and users consider how to take advantage of new hardware
options, new distributed computing options, new languages, and new
technologies such as the knowledge based extensions we are adding to our
tools.  The understanding of how to use and reuse these ideas will
improve.  A flexible customizable tool will assist that process.  Rigid
tools will slow and frustrate that process.

We offer the user, the consultant, the integrator, and the OEM, the
opportunity to add value to our technology.  Value that can be kept
secret as a competitive advantage, value that can be sold, value that
can be reused and re-marketed broadly.  To make it easier to reach the
world market Mark V will add third party tool extensions to our price
list, with Mark V paying royalties to the developer and maintainer.
Mark V supports a third party price list where the user buys directly
from the developer and gets customization and maintenance directly from
the organizations with the required expertise.

In 1994 Mark V added on line user group services for users and for
special interest groups such as TDK developers who offer to meet the
needs of distributors, integrators and OEMs.  This service will be a
clearinghouse for value added services, consulting, tool extensions, and
reusable components.

Standards

Meaningful standards important to the development process are beginning
to appear.  Standards for the applications being developed are also
becoming important.  Mark V has a long history of assisting this
evolution and remains committed to conformance with the technology which
enables efficient systems development.

We are adding OLE, CORBA, ODBC, and ODMG support for interoperability.
For example we are working with the OMG on the ODMG-93 standard, and the
evolution of PCTE for object orientation and fine granularity, both of
which will provide vendor independent and portable OODB implementations.
In addition, all Mark V repository operations will have an option of
using OLE 2 or the recently announced DEC supplied NT-based CORBA
interfaces for access to external repositories.



Date: Mon, 12 Sep 94
Subject: Re: Looking for prof. 9X on PC

Rational Software Corp. sells the VADS NT compiler.  The product
brochure mentions source-code debugger, Ada code linker, environmental
library, Ada code optimizer, graphical user interface.  However, it does
not have any of the 9X extensions.

R.R. Software sells a PC Ada compiler with 9X (might be beta).
R.R. Software, P.O. Box 1512, Madison, WI 53701
contact: Randall Brukardt 608/251-3133; rbrukardt@bix.com.



Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994
Subject: Re: Looking for prof. 9X on PC

hey there fellow Ada teamer,

We recently brought a copy of Integr Ada for Windows complete with
Visual Ada for Windows.  This is a product from Aetech.  I and most of
our team members are certainly dissapinted with this product.  It is in
a very early stage.  We paid US$785 (educational price) for it and it
certainly is not worth that money.

The compiler is good.  (Has some limited 9X features (non-validated)).
But the tools you would like to develop Windows GUI based applications
are missing.  I heard that the extended version of this product (around
$2000) is good and comes complete with all the tools.  In the version we
have the manuals are not up-to date and there are 4 example programs to
look at.

Meridian has a compiler and tools for the windows environment.  Meridian
has been marketing this compiler for quite some time now.  They have a
demostation disk that you can get (for FREE).

From my limited experience in GUI programming, Ada 83 is not an
extreamly good language.  Ada 9X features certainly help a lot.  Look
for products that offer support to call Windows API functions.

[...]

PS: I can upload Aetech's demo disk to you if you need it.....



From: frederic@alsys.com (Frederic Bonnard @lone)
Date: Mon, 12 Sep 94 15:58:00 PDT
Subject: NT environment

Dirk,

Alsys has currently an NT development environment in beta test.  The
product is validated and will be released in October 94.  Some customers
are actually developping production application with it.  We also have a
Windows product running with Win32s.  Those two products are named
ActivAda for Windows and ActivAda for Windows NT.  They both include an
Ada sensitive color-coded editor, a GUI buildr, Win32 libraries,
debugger ....They are both Ada83 products.

Regards
Frederic Bonnard
Product Manager
Alsys



Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994
Subject: Re: Looking for prof. 9X on PC

Alsys is a good choice.  Also, check into DDC; They have a 9X product,
but I'm not sure of which platforms.



From: ois!gamma!beckwb@uunet.uu.net (R. William Beckwith)
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 94 11:19:19 EDT
Subject: Re:  Summary - professional Ada on PC Windows

Hi Dick,

I am sending a copy of our Ada 9X product info.  While they is not
strictly for Windows NT, both products will have Windows NT and Chicago
versions.

... Bill

------------------------------------------------------------------------
e-mail: Bill.Beckwith@ois.com         FAX:  703-264-1721|   Team Ada
Objective Interface Systems, Inc.   Voice:  703-264-1900|dist, full O-O
1895 Preston White Drive, Suite 250                     |multithreading
Reston, VA  22091-5448  U.S.A.                          |   built in
------------------------------------------------------------------------

OIS is working on two new products for Ada 9X.  The first is a CORBA IDL
to Ada 9X translator.  The second is an advanced graphics library called
Fresco.  Additional tools for Fresco will follow.

What is CORBA ?

    Programming languages typically provide a mechanism for specifying
    interfaces, but not in a manner that is appropriate for remote
    access to procedures or data.  Distributed systems often provide a
    language for specifying how procedures can be called remotely, but
    without support for object references or polymorphism.  The Object
    Management Group (OMG) has developed the Interface Definition
    Language (IDL) as a standard way to specify objects that may be
    accessed remotely.  IDL is part of OMG's Common Object Request
    Broker Architecture (CORBA) that defines the mechanisms for
    transparent access to objects in a network.

    Using IDL has several advantages over the alternatives:

        * IDL is more abstract than object-oriented programming
          languages, yet concrete enough to be translated automatically
          into source code.

        * IDL can be mapped to several languages.  OMG has defined a
          standard binding to C, and efforts are in progress to
          standardize mappings for Ada 9X, C++, and Smalltalk.  As a
          result, an IDL specification is not tied to particular
          programming language.

        * IDL can support distribution; that is, the sender and receiver
          of an operation may be on different machines in the network.

    Thus, IDL provides the interface definitions for transparent,
    interlingual communication.  In addition to the obvious benefits of
    facilitating application distribution, using IDL for interface
    definition frees each system implementor to use the language of
    their choice by removing the concerns for interfacing with other
    languages.

    Each part of the application communicates through an Object Request
    Broker (ORB).  There are currently four major vendors marketing ORB
    products:

	* Distributed Objects Everywhere (DOE) by SunSoft

	* Object Broker by DEC

	* Orbix by IONA

	* SOMobjects by IBM

    Currently, an application built (in C or C++) with one product is
    not easily ported to another vendor's product.

What is OIS's CORBA product?

    OIS has developed an IDL to Ada 9X translator that currently
    generates Ada 9X source code in the form defined by the OIS/MITRE
    IDL-to-Ada 9X mapping document.  This includes:

	* interface packages
	* interface stubs
	* implementation package specification code
	* template implementation package body code

    Thus, you design the interface with IDL, run the translator to
    generate the framework, and then fill in the templated
    implementation body programs.

    The OIS Ada 9X packages include automatic memory management
    facilities.  This alleviates the need to assign responsibility for
    destroying each object to a particular segment of your program.
    Performance is improved by removing the need to constantly create
    copies of data.

    The current version of the translator product allows you to build
    standalone Ada 9X applications in the CORBA style.  This means that
    you can write code that uses the interface as a client and also
    write code that implements the server.

    The resulting code is good, object-oriented Ada 9X code and presents
    an elegant style of coding even for standalone systems.  In
    addition, low overhead, local calls are used to communicate with the
    server code.  The resulting application is as fast as any standalone
    system developed without CORBA in mind.

    Applications built with the current translator will not require
    changes to use the subsequent add-on modules that will support a
    particular ORB vendor's product.  Certain generated, hidden child
    packages are regenerated from the IDL that will connect to the ORB
    vendor's communication subsystem.

What is Fresco?

    C++ developers (and now Ada 9X developers) are getting a new
    graphics toolkit called Fresco.  Fresco is being developed by SGI
    and Fujitsu for the X Consortium.  A C++ sample implementation is
    available in the X11R6 distribution.  However, Fresco is not limited
    to the X Windowing system.  Fresco versions are planned for Windows
    NT and Chicago.

    Fresco is an object-oriented application programming interface (API)
    for graphical user interfaces that covers functionality in Xlib and
    Xt and adds support for structured graphics and application
    embedding.  Fresco has three fundamental features that distinguish
    it from Xt and most other APIs for graphical user interfaces:

        * Standard object model from the Object Management Group (OMG)

	* Resolution-independence

	* Graphical embedding

    Graphical embedding includes both presentation, which involves the
    spatial composition of user interface objects, and editing, which
    involves logical composition of objects.

    Fresco supports full multi-threading.  This means that Fresco
    functions properly in the presence of concurrent tasks sharing
    memory within an application, where more than one task is performing
    user interface operations at the same time.  In addition, the event
    loop, screen redraw, and application operations can run in three
    separate threads by default.

What is OIS's Fresco product?

    OIS is developing the Ada 9X version of Fresco.  We are mirroring
    the C++ implementation in Ada 9X so that the Ada community can
    develop their own widgets and tools for GUIs.

    The CORBA interface will allow Ada 9X Fresco applications to
    interoperate transparently with Fresco/C++ applications.  Developers
    with both OIS's Fresco and CORBA products can build graphical
    widgets and systems in Ada 9X that are usable from non-Ada language
    code.

    Ada 9X now has a highly advanced, truly portable graphics toolkit.
    This graphics toolkit is based on the next generation X standard,
    not a proprietary technology.

    Windows NT and Windows 4.0 versions are planned in addition to the
    VMS and Unix X Windows versions.



Subject: Re: NT Ada overview request
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 94

[...]
You might want to include the following information in your list.
[...]

Vendor:		Rational Software Corporation
Product:	VADSself
Platform:	NT/386/486/Pentium
		* Requires Win32 SDK C runtime libraries
Validation:	ACVC 1.11
Compliance:	ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A
		*NOTE: includes full support for LRM chapt. 13.
Price:		US$5,000.00 (Approximate)

VADSself is a 32-bit Windows NT Ada development environment.  VADSself
fully supports the Windows NT API and the 32-bit flat memory model.  In
addition to the Win32 bindings (including all Windows controls and
access to the native NT data structures) support for Win32s is included
to provide a mechanism for moving Win32 (32 bit) applications to the
Win32s (16-bit) environment.

VADSself includes the validated compiler, performance optimizer,
nonintrusive debugger, compilation manager, and library management
tools.