g-rh@cca.UUCP (Richard Harter) (07/26/84)
[------ Warning: Commercial Proprietary Software Announcement -------] Product Name: The Aide-De-Camp (TM) System. Company: Software Maintenance and Development Systems, Inc. Address: PO Box 555, Concord MA 01742 Net Address: cca!g-rh Machines: VAX, Pyramid, Apollo, Cadmus, PDP, Masscomp (currently) Sun, Prime, AT&T, Plexus, Data General, Perkin Elmer, NEC, and others (near future) Oper. Systems: UNIX (III, V, 4.1bsd, 4.2bsd), XENIX, VMS (currently) Primos, Perkin Elmer OS, others (near future) Pricing: Variable, depending on machine -- $5k to $25K, binary licenses. Discounts for multiple machines, restricted and unrestricted site licenses available. Source licenses available. Language: Vanilla C Memory: Program space ~180K (VAX 780), data space as much as 500K, depending on usage. Availability: Now. Synopsis: The Aide-De-Camp system is a software engineering development system. The system has two major functions; it manages a software information database and it provides a superior version management system. It is designed to be a central utility for software project development. Description: The Aide-De-Camp system is an interactive manager of a software database. The database contains a user defined dictionary of software terms, dependency relationship tables (history controlled), source code files (history controlled), user defined attribute tables, history tables, names of people, control lists, etc. Predefined relationships include: calls (as in one function calls another), contains (a file contains a function), includes (a file includes another file), refers (one entity refers to another), is (an entity has an attribute), and depends (user defined dependency between entities). Relationship information can be entered interactively; a program which scans C files and produces relationship information automatically in a form suitable for input to the ADC system comes with the package. The history control subsystem is integrated into the system. The Aide-De-Camp (ADC) history control subsystem compares favorably with SCCS and RCS in the following respects: (1) ADC Version control is software project wide. (2) ADC change sets (deltas) are independently reversible. (3) Relationships are history controlled as well as source. (4) ADC version control (and databases) are transportable across operating systems. (5) ADC change sets can contain changes to several files (6) Concurrent development and migration of change sets from one independent version to another is supported. On line query of a function or file gives, the date and author of definition and installation, the true name (if aliased), and the revision history. Queries of functions also give the name of the file that it is in, the name of all functions called, the name of all functions calling it, and the names of all other functions in the file, and the list of all files included by the file containing the function. Queries of files are similar. All queries print out entity abstracts (documentation file(s)) for the entity if they exist. Cross references to related information is also given. Printed reports can be produced. Master reports include cross referenced call trees for all programs, full dependency table printouts (both ways) for all relationships, the software dictionary, detailed change history for the software being managed, descriptions of all versions and control lists, and more. Annotated source listings give a full descriptive prolog which includes revision history, dependency information and more. Source code lines are annotated with a line number, the originating change set, and the chronological line numbers. List of entities such as functions, files, and change sets can be created. Most commands accept lists as arguments. List building is powerful; simple commands give the list of all files changed by a list of change sets, the list of all files containing procedures calling any procedure in a list of files, etc. Commands are generally smart about translating procedures into files and vice versa. For example, you can tell the system to write a list of procedures to your directory and it will write the correct version of the files containing those procedures from the database to your directory. A command to write make files is included. Answers to common questions: (1) Names are restricted to 127 bytes. There is no limit on length of commands or on number of commands stacked other than operating system limits on available memory. (2) The Aide-De-Camp system is language independent. To a large extent it is operating system independent. Aide-De-Camp databases can be transported from one machine to another. (3) Aliases can be defined and removed. Anything can be renamed, including ADC system commands. (4) Databases are secure against system crashes (barring hard disk failures.) Database contents are never overwritten during updates. Currently the system only permits one user at a time to have write access to a database; multiple read accesses are permitted. For more information, write to SMDS Inc., PO Box 555, Concord MA 01742, send a message to me via Usenet (cca!g-rh), or telephone us at 617-369-7398. Richard Harter Aide-De-Camp is a trademark of Software Maintenance and Development Systems, UNIX is a trademark of AT&T, VAX and PDP are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation, XENIX is a trademark, VMS may be a trademark, and vendor names are probably trademarks.
zemon@felix.UUCP (08/01/84)
Open letter to CCA:
Usenet is a NONcommercial network. Product announcements,
even if tagged as such, do not belong here. You may want
to notice that CCA is the only company posting such
announcements. Don't you wonder why?
I suppose you are posting such announcements as a form of
advertising. My reaction to such advertising is simple. I
will not even consider buying a product from a company
which behaves as you do.
I hope you are pleased with the corporate image you are
presenting.
-- Art Z.
...!{decvax,ucbvax}!trwrb!felix!zemonmark@elsie.UUCP (08/03/84)
<> I, for one, appreciate product announcements. I like to know what's available out there in the world, and I like to know in a timely manner. My only complant about the CCA article was that, at 114 lines, it was far too long. -- Mark J. Miller NIH/NCI/DCE/LEC UUCP: decvax!harpo!seismo!umcp-cs!elsie!mark Phone: (301) 496-5688
crm@rti-sel.UUCP (08/03/84)
Open letter to CCA: Usenet is a network containing things of interest to UNIX-ers. Product announcements of products of interest to unix users certainly belong on the net, especially since some of us may not be in close contact with the announcement methods that cost money... My reaction to reading a product announcement is to see if it is something in which I am interested. If so, I read it, and if not I 'n' it unmercifully. I hope Art Z. is pleased with the personal image *he* is presenting. (I *hate* censorship!) Charlie Martin
cowan%hare.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA (08/06/84)
From: Ken Cowan ZKO2-3/L13 381-2198 <cowan%hare.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA> This announcement brings up an interesting point. The rules of the USENET say that announcements such as this are a valid use of the net, whereas DoD says that commercialism is not a valid use of the ARPANET. Aside from the fact that DoD has almost as many lawyers as AT&T (just kidding), which rules does someone follow? It is probably easy enough to strike a compromise between these two nets and everybody (or most everybody) realizes that this news group travels between the two nets. What do we do about other nets. Since I am at DEC, I realize that this news travels the DEC Easynet, but I never think about what other nets might receive this. For instance, I saw some net addresses that implied XEROX has a seperate net with a gateway to the ARPANET. I also imagine this message travels the BITNET and CSNET, and I don't have any idea what constitutes valid use of those networks. The question is: How do you determine what is a valid use of a given news group? KC UUCP: decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-hare!cowan ARPA: cowan%hare.DEC@decwrl.arpa
ron@BRL-TGR.ARPA (08/06/84)
From: Ron Natalie <ron@BRL-TGR.ARPA> STOP IT. Mike Muuss, who handles the ARPANET distribution of these lists is on vacation so he can't speak. I am moderator of INFO-MICRO and we have decided on policy for that group that faced a similar problem about a year ago. First, there is nothing we can do about USENET since we don't have any control over it, unlike Internet sites. Second, a plea was made that the following guidelines be followed: Commercial product announcements be limitted to short press release style articles indicating the product and where to obtain furhter information. If you look at the product announcements in any trade magazine you'll see what I mean. Note the difference between product announcement and advertisement. This policy is used on the ARPANET even for groups that are not crosslinked into USENET. I suggest that everyone try to stick to these guidelines before the people who do the gatewaying get pissed off and sever the connection. -Ron