Latest News: The first Ada 95 compilers have already been validated (starting in the fall of 1995).
Almost all compiler vendors have announced the incremental introduction of Ada 95 features into their existing compilation systems (apart from DEC, who entered agreements with Rational and ACT instead). Some salient excerpts of public announcements:
Rational Apex is an integrated, interactive, software-engineering environment for controlling the development of complex software systems. Rational Apex Ada 2.0 represents the second phase of Rational's Ada 95 development plan; it provides full support for Ada 83.
Rational Apex Ada 2.0 features new code-generation support for important Ada 95 real-time features, such as protected types. The next phase of Rational's Ada 95 plan will include code-generation support for the object-oriented extensions. The plan concludes with support for the remaining Annexes by mid-1996.
"Rational is committed to providing full Ada 95 support across our entire product line," said Kevin Nix, marketing manager at Rational. "We are adding Ada 95 support to our products incrementally as part of a series of upgrades to the Rational product line. This release of Rational Apex is just one step in this process, which will culminate with full Ada 95 support in 1996."
Tartan's next product release, due in the second half of 1994, will provide "preliminary support for protected records and child libraries. This system will also include a full 9X parser and some support for real-time annex features including priority queuing."
Thomson Software Products announced full support for object-oriented programming, due in summer 1994.
Standardization News: The ISO publication date for Ada 95 was February 15, 1995. Ben Brosgol comments that Ada history buffs will note that this will mark the 17th anniversary of the delivery of the DoD1 Phase I design documents.
Congratulations to Tucker Taft and his Mapping Team, Chris Anderson and the Ada 9X Project Office, and Bob Mathis and ISO WG9, for bringing about the approval of the revision in record short time!
The "Draft International Standard" version of the Ada 9X Reference Manual (ISO 8652 DIS) was approved on November 1, 1994. Comments this round were mostly editorial in nature. No significant technical changes or additions were made, except to fix a few glaring technical errors. The final version (delivered to ISO) is 6.0.
Here's an Ada 95 program to celebrate the event, contributed by Norm Cohen:
with Ada.Integer_Text_IO, Ada.Text_IO;
use Ada.Integer_Text_IO, Ada.Text_IO;
procedure Celebrate is
Buffer : String (1 .. 9);
begin
Put (Buffer, 711317, 16);
Put_Line (Buffer (4 .. 8));
end Celebrate;
In particular, the following resolution was unanimously approved:
"42. User Transition: WG9 has now completed the work of revising 8652 [ed: The Ada Programming Language] and encourages all Ada users to begin their transition process to the new version of the standard. Although the new standard is not yet finally approved, WG9 does not anticipate any significant technical changes. Compiler and tool vendors, in particular, are encouraged to begin making new and revised capabilities available as an alternative to strict conformance to the existing standard."Except for editorial changes, the revision work is finished. From a technical point of view, Ada *94* is alive and well. It will be the *first* standardized object-oriented language.
The Mapping/Revision Team did an outstanding job.
Et nunc plaudite! (Parts of the March 1994 meeting description written by Stéphane Barbey)
As of February 1st, 1994, the Committee Draft for Ada 9X (ANSI/ISO CD 8652) passed both the ISO SC22 ballot and the ANSI canvass. A Draft International Standard (DIS) will soon incorporate responses to comments received during the voting. DIS voting should begin in May 1994, leading to a final document for the Ada 9X International Standard on (?) December 10, 1994 :-)
For comments, additions, corrections, gripes, kudos, etc.
e-mail to: Magnus.Kempe@di.epfl.ch
Copyright 1994, 1995
by Magnus Kempe.
All Rights Reserved.