harbaughs@EGLIN-VAX.ARPA (08/10/86)
From: trwrb!sdcrdcf!lwall@ucbvax.berkeley.edu Have you guys actually been burned by USE clauses, or are you just afraid of the dark? ---------- Yes, I (we) were burned just the other day. The situation was when using a spreadsheet. I know it isn't Ada but I believe the fundamental problem is with the human brain not the particular language. If you don't accept that premise then you probably want to skip over the example. The spreadsheet used the string "total G&A" in two places once in the salary distribution as a component of total salaries and once again as you would expect for the total g&a to date. When reading a printout of about 2 pages (we have a small company) the reader easily overloads the meaning of "total G&A" in the context of it's location but when reading the screen only one usage appears at a time due to the small 24 line window. You have probably guessed that the wrong "total G&A" was used in a calculation. Fortunately the resultant answer failed a reconciliation (the accountant's term for what we call assertions). The lesson is to use fully qualified names whether on spreadsheets or Ada programs. Hope you found this interesting. I find it interesting that Government auditors insist on an organized system of assertion checking whereas most Government software customers do not (to my knowledge). regards, sam harbaugh --------------------- ------