CASTOR@ADA20.ISI.EDU.UUCP (04/12/87)
Dear Friends of Ada*:
On April 2, 1987 the Honorable William H. Taft, IV (Deputy
Secretary of Defense) signed DoD Directive 3405.1, entitled
"Computer Programming Language Policy". This directive, which
was prepared by the Comptroller's Office within OSD, supercedes
DoD Instruction 5000.31, "Interim List of DoD Approved Higher
Order Programming Languages (HOL)" dated November 24, 1976.
Section D. POLICY directly addresses Ada via the following:
3. Limit the number of programming languages used within the
Department of Defense to facilitate achievement of the goal of
transition to the use of Ada for DoD software development.
a. The Ada programming language shall be the single,
common, computer programming language for Defense computer
resources used in intelligence systems, for the command and
control of military forces, or as an integral part of a weapon
system. Programming languages other than Ada that were
authorized and being used in full-scale development may continue
to be used through deployment and for software maintenance, but
not for major software upgrades.
b. Ada shall be used for all other applications, except
when the use of another approved higher order language is more
cost-effective over the application's life-cycle, in keeping with
the long-range goal of establishing Ada as the primary DoD higher
order language (HOL).
c. When Ada is not used, only the other standard higher
order programming languages shown in enclosure 3 shall be used to
meet custom-developed procedural language programming
requirements. The use of specific HOL's shall be based on
capabilities of the language to meet system requirements.
Guidance in selecting the appropriate HOL to use is provided in
NBS Special Publication 500-117.
(Note - The list of approved languages shown in enclosure 3
includes: Ada, C/ATLAS, COBOL, CMS-2M, CMS-2Y, FORTRAN, JOVIAL
(J73), Minimal BASIC, PASCAL, SPL/1.)
The text of this directive is too lengthy to distribute via net.
However, by April 17, 1987 the text of the directive will be
available on the DDN Ada20 host under the file name
"<ada-info>3405-1.hlp". It will also be available on the PC
bulletin board under the file name "3405-1.hlp". (The phone
number for the PC bulletin board is (202) 694-0215. Please feel
free to disseminate this directive to the widest possible
audience.
Virginia L. Castor (Director, Ada Joint Program office)
*Ada is a Registred Trademark of the U.S. Government (Ada Joint
Program Office)