[comp.software-eng] Rational ADA development environment

sani@wmt.UUCP (Sandor Nieuwenhuijs) (02/01/90)

Does anybody have information about a software development environment
for ADA, called "Rational" ?

Please send me names, addresses, numbers, or experiences....

-- 
Sandor Nieuwenhuijs             | E-mail:    sani@wmt.uucp
Westmount Technology B.V.       |            ..!uunet!hp4nl!wmt!sani
Poortweg 8, 2612 PA Delft       | Phone:     +31 15 610815
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billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 ) (02/03/90)

From sani@wmt.UUCP (Sandor Nieuwenhuijs):
> Does anybody have information about a software development environment
> for ADA, called "Rational" ?

   The Software Engineering Institute has a technical report (July 1988)
   entitled "Evaluation of the Rational Environment" which gives pretty
   thorough coverage.  The code numbers are CMU/SEI-88-TR-15 and 
   ESD-TR-88-16.  Copies can be obtained from:

      National Technical Information Services     
      U.S. Department of Commerce
      Springfield, VA  22161   USA 


   Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu

loren@rutabaga.Rational.COM (Loren Rosen) (02/03/90)

In article <7861@hubcap.clemson.edu> billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu writes:

>   The Software Engineering Institute has a technical report (July 1988)
>   entitled "Evaluation of the Rational Environment" which gives pretty
>   thorough coverage.  The code numbers are CMU/SEI-88-TR-15 and 
>   ESD-TR-88-16.  Copies can be obtained from:
>
>      National Technical Information Services     
>      U.S. Department of Commerce
>      Springfield, VA  22161   USA 
>

If anyone reads this (and by no means do I want to discourage any one from
doing so if you're interested) bear in mind that it's two years old and a bit
out-of-date.


--
     -- Loren Rosen, the token irrationalist at ...
	    Rational, 3320 Scott Blvd. Santa Clara Ca. 95054
            loren@rational.com  uunet!igor!loren

ssawyers@cadfx.ccad.uiowa.edu (Steve Sawyers,212 ERF,,) (02/10/90)

From article <405@wmt.UUCP>, by sani@wmt.UUCP (Sandor Nieuwenhuijs):
> Does anybody have information about a software development environment
> for ADA, called "Rational" ?
>
I worked as a project leader using the Rational environment for developing
cockpit flight displays at my previous employer.

The Rational Environment consists of a special computer and operating system.
The operating system is written in Ada and the command line uses Ada syntax 
so you are constantly imersed in the programming language. The operating system,
the file management system, the source code control system and the compiler are
very tightly coupled to the hardware. The version control system is also built in.

The editor supports statement completion, on the fly syntax checking, automatic
documentation generation based on a specialized form of commenting, and the abil-
ity to require commnet and documnetation before a file is committed to compilation.

The system supports incremental compilation.

We were the first project to go full bore into the environment, and we took a bunch of 
Pascal programmers and winged it. The documentation generation was fantastic, the 
code completion minimized time spent with our heads buried in the manuals and the version
control was flawless. My personal estimate was that it saved 30-40% of the time usually
spent to do a project of this size (40,000 LOC and 2500 pages of documentation).

Its expensive (don't remember the exact $$ for the cpu etc), but well worth it. You do have to watch for overloading the system and killing the response time. We found about 10 programmers was about right, 15 was too many.


Steve Sawyers
ssawyers@cadfx.ccad.uiowa.edu