Monitoring an Ada Software Development,
Abstract
Ada evolved from a desire within the Department of Defense to have a standard language for the development of real-time and large scale systems. In addition to providing features needed by those types of systems, Ada supports structured programming, data abstraction, modularity, and information hiding. Research with these techniques indicates that their use should improve the quality of the software development process and its product. While, programmers who are most familiar with various assembly languages and FORTRAN may use structured programming, generally they are not familiar with the other concepts. The problems with training programmers in Ada and its associated design and programming methods and then redeveloping current systems in Ada is unknown. In order to understand the effect of using Ada, the University of Maryland and the General Electric Company began a joint project. The purpose of the project is to monitor the use of Ada in an industrial software development project. In particular, we identify areas of success and difficulty in learning and using Ada as both a design and coding language. Our results indicate where emphasis should be placed in Ada training and in the development of tools and techniques for use with Ada. We also identify metrics used to evaluate and predict the cost, quality, and maintainability of Ada programs. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 1984
- Accession Number
- ADA165322
Entities
People
- Elizabeth Katz
- John Gannon
- N. M. Panlilio-yap
- Shih Chang
- Victor Basili
Organizations
- University of Maryland