ADA - NEW LANGUAGE THAT WILL IMPACT COMMERCIAL USERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86B00689R000300040023-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 17, 2007
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: September 1, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/07/17: CIA-RDP86B00689R000300040023-9
Approved For Release 2007/07/17: CIA-RDP86B00689R000300040023-9
 Approved For Release 2007/07/17: CIA-RDP86B00689R000300040023-9
z ~ ] Ecam mcon tsars
by Kenneth C. Shumate,
CCP, CDP
No, Ada is not pronounced "A,"
"D," "A
It is not an acronym. It is properly
spelled with only the initial letter
capitalized, and is pronounced as a
name.
In fact, the newest programming
language of the US Department of
Defense (DoD) is named in honor of
Augusta Ada Byron (1815-1852),
Countess of Lovelace and daughter
of the poet Lord Byron. She is.con-
sidered to be the first computer
programmer, having worked on the
Difference Engine of Charles Bab-
bage in the early 1800s.
Although the language has caused
quite a stir in engineering circles
and in DoD-oriented organizations,
it has not yet been very visible in
other data processing environ-
ments.
It will be.
The language has been touted as
virtually a panacea-"Ada, the Ulti-
mate Language." That's pretty
strong stuff. Ada may not be the ul-
timate language, but it is going to be
important in commercial applica-
tions as well as DoD embedded
computer systems.
Here is information on the lan-
guage, both its development and its-
general characteristics.
In the--early 1970s, the Federal
government recognized that too
many different languages were being
used for defense applications. A
DoD si )onsored high order language
working group was formed in 1975
with the mission to formulate re-
quirements, evaluate existing lan-
guages, and implement a minimal
set of languages for DoD use.
A series of requirements docu-
ments were developed as shown in
Figure 1. These documents were ex-
tensively reviewed by government,
industrial and academic communi-
ties. They represent a series of re-
finements in the language require-
ments, culminating in STEEL-
iVIAN.)'" In. 1976, the languages
shown in Figure 2 were evaluated
against the TINMAN requirements.
The major conclusions were:
? No language was suitable as it
was.
One language was a desirable and
achievable goal.
Development should be
from a suitable base:.
Pill or Algol 68.
started
Pascal,
Ada,11 and an. excellent technical
introduction in Reference 1. Many
of the engineering and computer
industry trade magazines have pro-
vided brief introductions. The re-
mainder of this article briefly men-
tions some of the technical charac-
teristics of the language.
Ada was designed to be a lan-
guage for the writing of large pro-
grains that. would be used over a.
long period of time. It was designed
to promote reliability and simplify
maintenance, to allow development
of programs from independently
developed packages, and to be effi-
cient in use of storage and execution
time. It is a modern, high-level,
strongly typed language, very Pas-
cal-like in many of its constructs.
It has special features for control
over visibility' of identifiers, for
handling concurrent processes and
After a competitive procurement, for handling errors in an orderly
four contractors-CII Honeywell way. It also allows access, in a con-
Bull, Intermetrics, SofTech and trolled way, to the machine-level
SRI International-were selected to architecture. It provides for data
design languages in parallel and in abstraction and has special con-
competition. The language design structs, called generic units, to allow
documents were color coded Green, building libraries of routines for var-
Red, Blue and Yellow, respectively, ious data types. Although it is not
in order to allow unbiased evaluation. likely to replace COBOL in typical
All four language design teams - data processing applications, the
chose Pascal as the base language. language will find use for operating
After three years of design, evalua- systems, compilers, numerical anal-
tion and refinement, the revised ysis, simulations, communication
Green language by Honeywell was systems and a variety of commercial
accepted as the Ada design Aug. 25, realtime applications. Ada will be of
1980. particular value in multiprocessing
The current definition of the Ada environments.
language is Reference 3. Reference Concurrent with the.implementa-
2 provides a review of the back- tion of Ada is.development of the
ground, scope and methods of the Ada Programming Support Envi-
language development. There is a ronment (APSE), a collection of
textbook on a preliminary version of integrated software tools to assist in
r^^' on on page 25
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Ada language Continued from page 23
Figure 1. Ada requirements
generation
Figure 2. Ada language
evaluation
? STRAWMAN
Apr. 1975
? Requirements based on TIN MAN
? WOODENMAN
Aug. 1975
? Languages evaluated were:
? TINMAN
Jan. 1976
? IRONMAN
1977
Jan
Used for DoD embedded computer
? REVISED IRONMAN
.
Jul. 1977
systems: Jovial, SPL/I, Tacpol,
CMS-2.
? STEELMAN
Jun. 1978
Used for process control and similar
applications: Coral-66, LIS, Pearl,
RTL/s, HAL/S.
Figure 4. APSE Architecture
f/Z User Interface
Used for research: Euclid, Moral,
ECL, Simula-67, PDL/2.
Used for applications outside of
DoD: COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal,
Algol, PL/1.
of early availability of Ada on the
Western Digital Microengine
and the use of Ada as the primary
systems programming language
Ada programming. There was a
series of requirements documents,
SANDMAN, PEBBLEMAN and
STONEMAN,'?I that defined a Ker-
nal APSE (KAPSE) and Minimal
APSE (MAPSE) related as shown
in Figure 3. The APSE results from
the addition of user tools as shown
in Figure 4, and has transportability
as shown in Figure 5. The APSE
provides a common interface be-
tween the user and Ada The MAPSE
is intended to be portable among a
wide variety of host machines and
operating systems.
Although the first DoD Ada com-
pilers will- not be available until
1983, there is considerable activity
in the commercial arena. Some of
the more important are the IBM use
of Ada as a program design language,
the Te ?.esoftware announcement,
ies. Another DATA
MANAGEMENT
article will follow, of
a technical nature with examples of
code.
Figure 5. APSE Transportability
APSE
3
r- cmm
Ada is an important step for-
ward in the development of
programming languages.
The nature of the language
has been addressed here
only in general terms, but
the references provide good
technical overviews and in-
troductions, and ought to be
MAPSE Standard
Interface- same
for all APSE's and
direct users
KAPSE for
Host A
APSE
4
Figure 3. Stoneman
architecture
The combination of Ada and the
APSE may not be the"ultimate" in
languages, but it is likely to be ex-
tremely important in the data proc-
essing industry over the next 20
years.
About the author
Shumate, CCP, CDP, is technical
director of the California div.,
Sot'1 ech He has been involved with
Ada in both government and industry
Continued on page 42
KAPSE Standard
Interfaces- Identical
APSE's tailored for
installations, projects
and individuals
APSE
5
KAPSE for
Host B
DATA M~Nerce~ewrtr 1% Approved For Release 2007/07/17: CIA-RDP86B00689R000300040023-9