Prepared by: James W. Moore, James.W.Moore@ieee.org, 1 July 1998.
This report is in the form of the requested "Business Plan." Other items are included in an additional Section 4.
June 1997 - June 1998
Development of ISO standards for Programming Language Ada
Planning for the revision of 8652 is commencing.
The contents of 11430 and 11729 are substantively subsumed by the subsequent approval of the 1995 revision of 8652. WG9 has requested that these standards be withdrawn at the conclusion of their five-year review period.
WG9 has determined that the revision of 12227 is currently unnecessary; this decision will be reconsidered periodically.
The contents of 11735 are substantively subsumed by the 1995 revision of 8652. This Technical Report will be withdrawn when usage of the 1987 version of the Ada language has diminished.
WG9 has submitted this document to ISO Central Secretariat for publication.
WG9 has submitted this document to ISO Central Secretariat for publication.
WG9 has approved the disposition of comments from the FCD ballot. The project editor has been instructed to prepare a revised draft and forward it to the SC22 Secretariat for FDIS balloting.
A WD has been distributed to WG9. A revised WD will be circulated in WG9 for email ballot approval. During the autumn of 1998, the draft will be sent to SC22 for pDTR registration.
A new work item will be proposed for a standard on the subject of conformity assessment of Ada language processors. The new work item proposal and an initial WD will be circulated to SC22 for endorsement at the 1998 plenary meeting.
There are two major professional societies in this area: the Special Interest Group on Ada (SIG) of the Association for Computing Machinery and Ada-Europe. The semi-annual meetings of WG9 are scheduled to coincide with the major conferences organized by these two groups. Informal but close cooperation with SIGAda is maintained by the convener. The UK Head of Delegation to WG9 is also an officer of Ada-Europe.
There is one major vendor consortium, the Ada Resource Association (ARA). Informal liaison with ARA is maintained. WG9 is looking for opportunities to transpose de facto standards from the ARA.
The United States Department of Defense (DOD), Ada Joint Program Office (AJPO) has a continuing interest in the Ada language. Liaison is assured because AJPO funds the convener to serve in his position.
In addition, liaison and/or consultation are applied as appropriate with other working groups in SC22 and with the IEEE Computer Society Software Engineering Standards Committee.
The most fundamental change in the market has been action by the US DOD to drop its "mandate" of Ada in all military systems. The choice of language to be used will now be made by each individual development program. Certain segments of the DOD apparently remain committed to favoring Ada, notably the real-time, embedded systems community. Because DoD no longer has any official role in the Ada language, it will no longer perform compiler validation (i.e. conformity assessment). WG9 has been requested to develop a conformity assessment standard to reconstitute the authority for the continuing de facto practice of compiler validation.
Achieved during the past year:
With the completion of the major language revision, available resources are declining, as expected. All new work item suggestions are screened by the requirement for active support from five national bodies. This has worked well, resulting in explicit commitments from national bodies supporting a possible project.
Aside from the specific deliverables described below, the most important task of WG9 is to set up a defect resolution and clarification process for IS 8652; this work would eventually lead to formal COR or AMD documents or to a revision of the base standard. So that preliminary defect reports and clarifications may be properly circulated among the entire community of concern, it is necessary that they be openly available without copyright restrictions. The current uncertainty regarding the copyright issue endangers satisfactory performance of this task. Even the trial relaxation of the policy is inadequate because the threat remains that once such material is introduced into the JTC1 process, it is subject to imposition of copyright in the future.
The following deliverables are anticipated during the next 12 months:
Routine processing will suffice to achieve our goals for IS 13813, IS 13814, FCD 15291 and WD 15942.
To achieve the goal for the new work item, WG9 will request endorsement of the new work item at the SC22 plenary and will circulate a WD at that time. If comments are favorable, concurrent CD registration and FCD ballot will be requested.
Unexpectedly heavy technical comment could delay any of the strategies described above. WG9 has mitigated this risk by providing mechanisms for full treatment of NB technical concerns at the WG level.
None.
This section lists other items that are not part of the "Business Plan" but are appropriate for Convener's Report.
WG9 requests that SC22 appoint Brian Wichmann (UK) to the position of Project Editor for 22.15942.
WG9 requests that SC22 endorse a new work item proposal for conformity assessment of Ada language processors. (Additional information will be circulated separately.)
WG9 recommends that IS 11430 and IS 11729 be withdrawn at the conclusion of their five-year review period.
WG9 is moving rapidly toward electronic distribution. Recent WG9 documents have been exchanged exclusively via email. A Web page, "http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg9/" provides documents for consultation.
As noted in Section 3.0, continuing uncertainty regarding ISO copyright policy hampers progress toward an effective defect reporting and clarification process.