Ada User Journal 146 Editorial 147 News 149 Conference Calendar 171 Forthcoming Events 178 Proceedings of the 13Th International Real-Time Ada Workshop B
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ADA Volume 29 USER Number 3 September 2008 JOURNAL Contents Page Editorial Policy for Ada User Journal 146 Editorial 147 News 149 Conference Calendar 171 Forthcoming Events 178 Proceedings of the 13th International Real-Time Ada Workshop B. Brosgol, M. Aldea “Session: Ada and Other Standards” 186 S. Michell “Interfacing Ada to Operating Systems” 188 J. A. de la Puente, S. Urueña “Session: Conclusions and Plans for next IRTAW” 192 Proceedings of the “Ada and Software Engineering Education” Session of Ada-Europe 2008 J. Real, L. M. Pinho “Session Report: Ada and Software Engineering Education” 196 E. Schonberg, R. Dewar “A Principled Approach to Software Engineering Education, or Java Considered Harmful” 200 J. W. McCormick “Ada and Software Engineering Education: One Professor's Experiences” 203 J.-P. Rosen “Is Ada Education Important?” 208 C. Brandon “Use of Ada in a Student CubeSat Project” 213 Ada Gems 217 Ada-Europe Associate Members (National Ada Organizations) 220 Ada-Europe 2008 Sponsors Inside Back Cover Ada User Journal Volume 29, Number 3, September 2008 146 Editorial Policy for Ada User Journal Publication Original Papers Commentaries Ada User Journal — The Journal for Manuscripts should be submitted in We publish commentaries on Ada and the international Ada Community — is accordance with the submission software engineering topics. These published by Ada-Europe. It appears guidelines (below). may represent the views either of four times a year, on the last days of individuals or of organisations. Such March, June, September and All original technical contributions are articles can be of any length – December. Copy date is the last day of submitted to refereeing by at least two inclusion is at the discretion of the the month of publication. people. Names of referees will be kept Editor. confidential, but their comments will Opinions expressed within the Ada Aims be relayed to the authors at the discretion of the Editor. User Journal do not necessarily Ada User Journal aims to inform represent the views of the Editor, Ada- readers of developments in the Ada The first named author will receive a Europe or its directors. programming language and its use, complimentary copy of the issue of the general Ada-related software Journal in which their paper appears. Announcements and Reports engineering issues and Ada-related We are happy to publicise and report activities in Europe and other parts of By submitting a manuscript, authors grant Ada-Europe an unlimited license on events that may be of interest to our the world. The language of the journal readers. is English. to publish (and, if appropriate, republish) it, if and when the article is Although the title of the Journal refers accepted for publication. We do not Reviews to the Ada language, any related topics require that authors assign copyright to Inclusion of any review in the Journal are welcome. In particular papers in the Journal. is at the discretion of the Editor. any of the areas related to reliable Unless the authors state explicitly A reviewer will be selected by the software technologies. otherwise, submission of an article is Editor to review any book or other taken to imply that it represents publication sent to us. We are also The Journal publishes the following prepared to print reviews submitted types of material: original, unpublished work, not under consideration for publication else- from elsewhere at the discretion of the • Refereed original articles on where. Editor. technical matters concerning Ada and related topics. News and Product Announcements Submission Guidelines Ada User Journal is one of the ways in All material for publication should be • News and miscellany of interest to which people find out what is going on sent to the Editor, preferably in the Ada community. in the Ada community. Since not all of electronic format. The Editor will only accept typed manuscripts by prior • Reprints of articles published our readers have access to resources arrangement. elsewhere that deserve a wider such as the World Wide Web and Prospective authors are encouraged to audience. Usenet, or have enough time to search through the information that can be contact the Editor by email to • Commentaries on matters relating found in those resources, we reprint or determine the best format for to Ada and software engineering. report on items that may be of interest submission. Contact details can be to them. found near the front of each edition. • Announcements and reports of Example papers conforming to conferences and workshops. Reprinted Articles formatting requirements as well as some word processor templates are • Reviews of publications in the While original material is our first available from the editor. There is no field of software engineering. priority, we are willing to reprint (with limitation on the length of papers, the permission of the copyright holder) though a paper longer than 10,000 • Announcements regarding material previously submitted words would be regarded as standards concerning Ada. elsewhere if it is appropriate to give it exceptional. a wider audience. This includes papers Further details on our approach to published in North America that are these are given below. not easily available in Europe. We have a reciprocal approach in granting permission for other publications to reprint papers originally published in Ada User Journal. Volume 29, Number 3, September 2008 Ada User Journal 147 Editorial This September issue of the Ada User Journal was indeed the most demanding, and unfortunately also the most delayed, I had so far in my (very) short term as the Journal’s Editor. Nevertheless, I am sure that the readers will understand and apologise us for its late appearance, considering the worth of its contents. First, the issue finalizes the publication of the Proceedings of the 13th International Real-Time Ada Workshop (IRTAW 2007), which started to be published in the Ada User Journal last December, almost one year ago. In the last technical session of the workshop the participants analysed the relation of Ada with other standards, particularly POSIX, as proposed in a paper by Stephen Michell, of Maurya Software, Canada. The last session was dedicated to the analysis of conclusions and open issues coming from the discussions in the workshop, and to future plans for the workshop itself. Whilst closing the subject of IRTAW 2007, we start to publish material coming from the Ada-Europe 2008 conference. In this issue the reader will find the proceedings of the “Ada and Software Engineering Education” session of the conference. This special session had the objective of discussing the role of programming languages, and of Ada in particular, in the software engineering curriculum, and consisted in the presentation of four position papers and a debate. In the first paper of these proceedings, the reader will find the report of the session, with a summary of the presentations and the main issues introduced during the debate. Afterwards, the first position paper is by Ed Schonberg and Robert Dewar, from the New York University, USA, providing their analysis on the use of Java as the first programming language, arguing that Ada and C++ are superior for introductory computer science courses. The following paper, by John McCormick from the University of Northern Iowa, USA, presents an interesting experience of students implementing software to control a railroad model and the gains which were obtained by switching from C to Ada. The third position paper is by Jean Pierre Rosen, of Adalog, France, providing an assessment of the importance of education for software engineering in general. Finally, the session closes with a paper by Carl Brandon, of the Vermont Technical College, USA, describing the use of Ada to implement the software for a pico-satellite platform. We should acknowledge the effort of the organizers and the participants of the session on supporting this concern, which is of particular importance for the future of Ada. There is also a note on the summary of the session on the importance of introducing software reliability in the curricula of computer science and related courses, something that we should all campaign for. Finally, the Ada Gems section provides two gems on Changing Data Representation, by Robert Dewar. And, as usual, we have the News, Calendar and Forthcoming Events sections, providing the readers with a quick look to the world of Ada. Luís Miguel Pinho Porto September 2008 Email: [email protected] Ada User Journal Volume 29, Number 3, September 2008 149 News Santiago Urueña Technical University of Madrid (UPM). Email: [email protected] We welcome your nominations of Your participation in the nominations deserving recipients. process will help maintain the prestige Contents The ACM SIGAda Awards recognize and honor of these awards. individuals and organizations who have Thank you, made outstanding contributions to the Ada-related Organizations 149 John McCormick Ada community and to SIGAda. The two Ada-related Events 149 categories of awards are: Chair ACM SIGAda Ada and Education 151 Ada-related Resources 151 (1) Outstanding Ada Community [See also “Nov 7 — SIGAda Awards” in Ada-related Tools 151 Contribution Award — For broad, lasting AUJ 28-4 (Dec 2007), p.201. —su] contributions to Ada technology & usage. Ada-related Products 157 Jun 8–12 — Ada-Europe Ada and GNU/Linux 160 (2) ACM SIGAda Distinguished Service References to Publications 161 Award — For exceptional contributions 2009 Ada Inside 162 to SIGAda activities & products. Ada in Context 164 From: Dirk Craeynest Please consider who should be nominated <[email protected]> this year. You may nominate a person for Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:05:49 +0200 Ada-related either or both awards, and as many people (CEST) as you think worthy. One or more awards Subject: CFP 14th Conf.