Ada and Beyond Software Policies for the Department of Defense (1997) / Chapter Skim
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DOD Software Policy: Analysis and Recommendations
DOD Software Policy: Analysis and Recommendations
Pages 34-52
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From page 34... ...
The analysis concludes that Ada can provide DOD with a considerable advantage in DOD-dominated warfighting applications, but not in commercially dominated applications. It also concludes that ensuring the Ada advantage for warfighting applications will require DOD investment to sustain a robust Ada infrastructure, but that the benefits justify the investment.
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From page 35... ...
Besides the individual production factors involving software tools, technology, and personnel, an even stronger determinant of international competitive advantage in information dominance is the existence of a socio-technical infrastructure, which couples the production factors with knowledge resources, marketing channels, strategic partnerships, user groups, closely linked customer-supplier chains, and trends in domestic demand, thus stimulating innovation and enabling rapid development of new software products. Porter's (1990)
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From page 36... ...
services" for large weapon delivery platforms such as aircraft carriers, or support subsystems performing mainstream data management, networking, and graphical user interface functions.
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From page 37... ...
Commercially Dominated Applications Commercially dominated applications include office and management support, routine operations support, asset status monitoring, logistics, medicine, and non-battlefield communications processing. ADA BUSINESS-CASE ANALYSIS Table 3.1 summarizes the results of the committee's business-case analysis for DOD use of Ada versus other third-generation programming languages (3GLs)
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From page 38... ...
Personnel High assurance and real-time performance Ease of change Socio-technical nffas~ucture Critical portions largely custom, or DOD-managed reuse Some Ada advantage due to existing DOD Ada investments Dropping Ada would leave large existing DOD Ada software base unsupported Some Ada advantage: early verification of architecture interface obviates need for rework DOD investment required for Ada parity in general tools DOD investment creates some Ada advantage in high-assurance, real-time tools DOD has dominant position in Ada/applications skill base, which requires some investment to sustain Expensive for adversaries to create comparable Ada/applications skill base Non-Ada/applications skill base achievable, but with initial cost, lower competitive advantage Ada superior; attributes are successcritical . Ada somewhat superior, more so for high-assurance changes Existing DOD Ada-based infrastructure stronger than alternatives; requires some investment to sustain Expensive for adversaries to match and sustain comparable infrastructure .
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From page 39... ...
Real-Time Performance As described in Appendix B and summarized in the Chapter 2 section titled "Technical Evaluation of Ada 95 and Other Third-Generation Programming Languages," Ada provides a significant technical advantage for achieving high assurance and real-time performance, two attributes that are critical to DOD's competitive advantage for many warfighting applications. In commercially dominated applications, levels of assurance that can be provided by COTS represent the standard.
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From page 40... ...
Thus, although a moderate DOD investment is required to sustain Ada-based warfighting software, the competitive advantage gained in warfighting applications makes it more than worthwhile. On the other hancI, for commercially dominated applications, the pervasiveness of C and C++ in the socio-technical infrastructure places Ada at a major disadvantage.
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From page 41... ...
DOD Software Policy: Analysis and Recommendations 41 ,..
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From page 42... ...
Available project data and analyses of programming language features indicate that, compared with other programming languages, Ada provides DOD with higher-quality warfighting software at a lower life-cycle cost. DOD can increase its advantage by strengthening its Ada-based production factors (involving software tools, technology, and personnel)
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From page 43... ...
For warfighting software, supporting Ada-based production factors (involving software tools, technology, and personnel) gives DOD a competitive advantage.
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From page 44... ...
A few organizations within DOD have benefited significantly from efforts to provide a sound basis for software metrics; a DODwide data collection effort would magnify the net benefits (see Chapter 21. ASSESSMENT OF POLICY ALTERNATIVES Table 3.2 summarizes current DOD policy, the committee's recommended alternatives to the policy currently in force, and other programming language policy alternatives suggested to or considered by the committee.
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From page 45... ...
; COTS, commercial off-the-shelf; 4GL, fourth-generation programming language; KLOC, 1,000 lines of code; NDIs, nondevelopmental items; SAE, Service Acquisition Executive.
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From page 46... ...
to be able to disqualify such inadequate solutions. The net result for DOD warfighting software then becomes a mix of strong and weak Ada and non-Ada solutions, and a socio-technical infrastructure characterized by increasing problems with proliferation of programming languages.
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From page 47... ...
No Better COTS, NDI, or 4GL Solution Exists As discussed in Chapter 1, the current DOD policy establishing Ada's precedence over COTS, NDI, and 4GL solutions has led to a number of bureaucratic delays or incorrect choices of an Ada solution over a more cost-effective COTS solution. In addition to its recommended alternative, another alternative considered by the committee was to require the use of COTS, NDI, and 4GL solutions.
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From page 48... ...
Language Choice Process The following subsections recommend alternative approaches to implementation and approval of the language choice process. Replace the Waiver Approval Process with Other DOD Software Reviews The current DOD Ada waiver approval process is disconnected from other reviews of a project, causing extra work and out-of-context decisions (see Chapter 11.
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From page 49... ...
Investment in Ada Infrastructure The current DOD strategy is to reduce investment in Ada from a $10 million annual budget in Fiscal Year 1994 to essentially zero in Fiscal Year 1998. Other programming languages that DOD uses but provides little or no support for include Jovial and CMS-2; at this level of investment, bindings, runtime systems, language features, and tools are kept current only by projects using the language.
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From page 50... ...
This assumption is conservative with respect to most estimates generated by software cost models, which indicate that the improvement per rating level for these variables averages 10 to 12 percent (see Box 3.21. Given these assumptions, an estimate of the annual cost of sustaining the 50 million lines of code (50 MLOC)
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From page 51... ...
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From page 52... ...
Xerox's Digital Systems Department evaluated Ada, C++, and two other languages for use in large, real-time, embedded systems software, and concluded that Ada was superior in terms of language features, implementation, and cost. In practice, however, the bulk of Xerox's embedded systems software continues to be developed in C and C++.
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