Improving Ada's image
Andrew Carroll
lets form an international company. We could all be in charge of a
"division" that is in our city and if there were several people who
lived close then they could be in the same division. Initially we could
use something "like" sourceforge for projects and we could all submit
ideas for software to build. Then we have a whole company of people to
start knocking out software for an international market.
In the US there is a large push for small devices like handhelds and
cell phones, wireless devices and web services provided by .Net or Java.
Games are huge here in the US. So there's some work for us already. I
am not an accountant or business person so I can't answer any questions
about funding. I do have some ideas.
We could sell all our used toys on ebay. Or open an online store or
something and sell 'widgets' and 'thingamabobs'. Then again, we have to
have funding for that as well. Maybe for the first project we could all
volunteer some time to get a product out there and then use the revenue
for the next project?
I guess there are too many issues with this idea? Who runs it? Who do
we all trust to handle all the cash we would make? So on, and so forth.
In closing I will say this. If Ada is going to be big, or even bigger,
it's going to take a large team effort.
Andrew Carroll
Carroll-Tech
720-273-6814
and...@carroll-tech.net
Marin David Condic
World" and start developing a larger base of Ada projects!
I'd suggest that you think about it this way: Rather than try to
organize a company and go searching for ideas, get an idea and form a
company around it. Think of some product that you believe might have a
market. It doesn't need to be new - just something you think could be
done better, etc. Get enough of a back-of-the-envelope sketch of what
you think it would look like and start talking to people to see if
they'd be interested in working on it. You have to determine what you
think the market is (who would buy it? how many could be sold? at what
price?) and from there you can start worrying about developing an
organization to do it.
Don't bite off more than you can chew - its best to get something small
going and from there look to expand it. But you're thinking along the
right lines!
MDC
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Marin David Condic
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Marius Amado Alves
is one of my attempts of such a project :-)
http://www.liacc.up.pt/~maa/mneson
Marin David Condic wrote:
> ... I'd suggest that you think about it this way: Rather than try to
> organize a company and go searching for ideas, get an idea and form a
> company around it. Think of some product that you believe might have a
> market....
> Andrew Carroll wrote:
>> I have an idea. I don't know if it has already mentioned or not but
>> lets form an international company....
Marin David Condic
advantage over things like Oracle in order to be practical. It probably
also needs to be able to import/export to Oracle.
MDC
Marius Amado Alves
> advantage over things like Oracle in order to be practical.
E.g. competitive pricing.
> It probably
> also needs to be able to import/export to Oracle.
Mneson imports/exports SQL and XML like crazy.
Marin David Condic
unless you want support or certain usage options.
Import/Export: I meant with respect to someone having a few gigabytes of
data and tables & offering them migration tools that make it so any
idiot can push the button and get it into your database.
But you also need to be *different* in some respect - offering something
the rest of the world doesn't. In part, it might be support for Ada data
types that are not commonly supported by most SQL databases. Maybe
including the various checks. Or some sort of "Object Orientedness" or
other features that give it a twist. From experience we should know by
now that you can't just say "Me too!!!" and expect people to switch from
an industry leader.
Also, to "product-ize" it, it has to be done better than most of the
freebie tools one sees lurking on the Internet. Really professional
user's manuals, reference manuals, "Mneson For Dummies" guides, etc.
That might actually be a source of income: Get the software free but buy
the books.
Anyway, it sounds interesting and it might have some potential. It would
be good to give some thought to doing something that really makes an
"end product" that hits at the consumer or business level. A database
has some "end product-ness" to it, but its still kind of in the
"Software Development Tools" category and that can be a tough nut to
crack when you're coming at it with a niche language. An end product
(like an accounting package or office suite or other app) is the sort of
thing nobody cares what language you used - just so long as it works.
That's where I think Ada needs to get more activity.
MDC
Robert C. Leif
board for it. The organization of the INEL laboratory, particularly
under Lockheed-Martin, was not favorable to commercialization. There
was neither incentive nor support to transform this Ada 83 product
into Ada 95.
I believe that two of the major software engineers have gone into
private enterprise and are using either the Ada or Modula 2 version to
run web sites. I believe that the latest information is at
http://sage.inel.gov/hpag_commerc.htm &
http://sage.inel.gov/hpag_cd.htm
The date for the latter is Sage-ST ä - CD3 (December 1996).
Bob Leif
------------------------------------------------
Marin David Condic <nob...@noplace.com> wrote in message news:<40C22F52...@noplace.com>...
Wes Groleau
RTDB and FIRM are Ada 83 and Ada 95 database suites
from Lockheed-Martin. Spinoffs from the AN/BSY-2 project.
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/wms/findPage.do?dsp=fec&ci=11378&rsbci=13210&fti=0&ti=0&sc=400
http://www.cs.binghamton.edu/~kang/dissertation.ps
--
Wes Groleau
You always have time for what you do first.
Marius Amado Alves
Marius Amado Alves wrote:
>> A database product could be interesting - it just has to offer some
>> advantage over things like Oracle in order to be practical.
>
> E.g. competitive pricing.
I should never have said *just* that.
Instead:
- content management automation
- integrated web server
- a D language
- various DSLs
- graph data model
- ...
Marius Amado Alves
Marin David Condic wrote:
> Well, you've got to compete against MySQL too. That's basically free -
> unless you want support or certain usage options.
I'd like to give the SDC philosophy a try. Distribute freely, but if
used commercially, the authors get a cut.
> Import/Export: I meant with respect to someone having a few gigabytes of
> data and tables & offering them migration tools that make it so any
> idiot can push the button and get it into your database.
Yes, that can be done easily.
> But you also need to be *different* in some respect - offering something
> the rest of the world doesn't. In part, it might be support for Ada data
> types that are not commonly supported by most SQL databases.
Ada-specific features are nice, but certainly not killer ones.
> Also, to "product-ize" it, it has to be done better than most of the
> freebie tools one sees lurking on the Internet. Really professional
> user's manuals, reference manuals, "Mneson For Dummies" guides, etc.
> That might actually be a source of income: Get the software free but buy
> the books.
A business model to consider.
> Anyway, it sounds interesting and it might have some potential. It would
> be good to give some thought to doing something that really makes an
> "end product" that hits at the consumer or business level.
I think this way too. The niche I have in mind is content
management--because I know the domain. Others suggestions are welcome.
Accounting sounds good--but I don't know the domain. But here is where
the SDC model could excel: someone makes the accounting application, and
Mneson authors still get their fair cut.
Marius Amado Alves
>
> http://www.cs.binghamton.edu/~kang/dissertation.ps
Very interesting. The dissertation is very useful for real time database
design. Is there a connection between the dissertation and
Lockheed-Martin's product?
Marin David Condic
pricing, you have a hard time finding a way into an existing market
already dominated by other players. *Especially* if it somehow involves
a potential user having to adopt a new language (Ada) in some regard.
The market has to perceive it as offering something so new and unique
that it is worth the effort to try to adopt a new product over what
they''re already using.
Of course, I still think it helps to get some kind of end-user product
where nobody is going to care about what language it is implemented in,
but I see your point about building some apps on top of a database -
like accounting or whatever else may get some creative attention.
MDC
Marius Amado Alves wrote:
>
>
> I should never have said *just* that.
>
> Instead:
>
> - content management automation
> - integrated web server
> - a D language
> - various DSLs
> - graph data model
> - ...
>
>
Wes Groleau
> already dominated by other players. *Especially* if it somehow involves
> a potential user having to adopt a new language (Ada) in some regard.
architecture: You write your SQL, and run a converter that turns it into
an Ada record containing, instead of string literals, array aggregates of
individual characters, e.g.,
... 'S', 'E', 'L', 'E', 'C', 'T', ' ', 'F', 'I', 'E', 'L', 'D', ' ', ...
--
Wes Groleau
"Beware the barrenness of a busy life."
-- George Verwer
Wes Groleau
I had assumed so when it popped up in a search for the name Eaglespeed.
But I skimmed through it after posting and didn't spot the reference.
RTDB was developed on the AN/BSY-2 project when it was discovered that
Ingres was not even close to being capable of meeting the timing
requirements. FIRM was the sequel (no pun intended) done in Ada 95
for an Air Force contract. I do not know when the name was changed
to EagleSpeed nor how far it has evolved since FIRM.
Binghamton (where the dissertation was done) is close enough to Syracuse
that folks working at LMCO on FIRM could have gone there at the same time.
--
Wes Groleau
"Grant me the serenity to accept those I cannot change;
the courage to change the one I can;
and the wisdom to know it's me."
-- unknown
Georg Bauhaus
:> It probably
:
: Mneson imports/exports SQL and XML like crazy.
How does it do that?
~/src/mneson-20040601> grep -i 'xml\|sql' *.ad?
~/src/mneson-20040601>
BTW, will you adapt the sources to the current AI302 sources
from tigris?
regards,
Georg
Marius Amado Alves
>
> How does it do that?
>
> ~/src/mneson-20040601> grep -i 'xml\|sql' *.ad?
> ~/src/mneson-20040601>
Sorry, sorry, sorry, I should have said "can", or "will" import/export.
I should have made explicit *here* (and not just in the documents) that
some Mneson items are only planned.
But good news: XML importation is already realised, via translation to
Mntext (and then compilation with Tools.Mntext). The translator is not
in Mneson.Tools yet, it's a program called xml2mntext in a previous
experimental version... and perhaps not released, I'll check, sorry. And
I'll try to make a consolidated system release soon.
Exportation is easy for either XML and SQL.
Importation from SQL is easy once the Relational Layer (another planned
item) is in place.
> BTW, will you adapt the sources to the current AI302 sources
> from tigris?
This is one of the million "to do" items, yes. BTW, the time is near for
Mneson to move to something like Tigris, and preferably better, to avert
slipups like the above. Suggestions and help welcome.
Marius Amado Alves
> Mntext (and then compilation with Tools.Mntext). The translator is not
> in Mneson.Tools yet, it's a program called xml2mntext in a previous
I just checked. It was in 20040506 which for some reason I had not
released then, but just did now. Check out the xml_convention document
to understand what xml2mntext does.
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
> I have an idea. I don't know if it has already mentioned or not but
> lets form an international company. We could all be in charge of a
> "division" that is in our city and if there were several people who
> lived close then they could be in the same division. Initially we could
> use something "like" sourceforge for projects and we could all submit
> ideas for software to build. Then we have a whole company of people to
> start knocking out software for an international market.
...
> Andrew Carroll
> Carroll-Tech
> 720-273-6814
> and...@carroll-tech.net
Create an Ada credit card company, where the profits go
into promoting the use of Ada. The card must offer
competitive rates to be attractive (if they can
introduce a Penguin card then..)
--
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg
Björn Persson
> I have an idea. I don't know if it has already mentioned or not but
> lets form an international company. We could all be in charge of a
> "division" that is in our city and if there were several people who
Seeing that I'm unemployed I'm vaguely interested in anything that could
get me a programming job, but I'm afraid I'm not the right person to run
a company.
--
Björn Persson
jor ers @sv ge.
b n_p son eri nu