The Congressional Ada Mandate The Ada Programming Language was developed by the Department of Defense in order to reduce the cost of developing and maintaining new software systems and to serve as the standard programming language throughout the four Service branches. The mandate for the use of the Ada Programming Language first appeared as part of the FY 1991 Department of Defense Appropriations Act, and in subsequent appropriations bills as described below. The mandate went into effect on June 1, 1991. The current wording of the mandate can be found in Section 9070 of the FY 1993 Department of Defense Appropriations Act (Public Law 102-396), which was signed into law by the President on October 6, 1992. Section 9070 states that: "Notwithstanding any other provisions of law, where cost effective, all Department of Defense software shall be written in the programming language Ada, in the absence of special exemption by an official designated by the Secretary of Defense." Legislative history The mandate first appeared in Section 8084 of H.R. 5803, the Defense Appropriations Act for FY 1991. The bill was signed into law by the President on November 5, 1990, becoming Public Law 101-511. The House Appropriations Committee Report that accompanied H.R. 5803 (House Report 101-822) states that the Committee envisioned that "the Office of the Secretary of Defense will administer the general provision in a manner that prevents disruption to weapons systems that are well into development [employing other programming languages]." (See House Reasoning below) Section 8084, as reported out by the House of Representatives, did not contain the proviso "where cost effective." The Ada mandate was deleted entirely by the Senate during their consideration of the bill. When the House and Senate conferees met to reconcile differences in the two bills, they restored the mandate with the "where cost effective" proviso. The mandate (minus reference to the June 1991 start date) was included in the FY 1992 Department of Defense Appropriations Act as Section 8073. The bill was signed into law by the President on November 26, 1991, becoming Public Law 102-172. The FY 1992 wording of the mandate was later incorporated, verbatim, into the FY 1993 Defense Appropriations Act. Implementation questions Since enactment, the Services have issued statements that may be helpful in answering questions about how best to implement the mandate. Two of these are available through the Ada Information Clearinghouse. "The Air Force Interpretation of the 1991 Congressional Mandate" is available in either hardcopy or electronic form (AdaIC form P78, AF-INT91.TXT). A hardcopy version of the Navy's two-volume Ada Implementation Guide is available through the Navy's normal distribution channels. It is also available through the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) -- for DoD Installations and defense contractors with DTIC accounts, and the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) -- for the general public. The Guide can be ordered using accession number AD-A250 791 when contacting either agency at one of the following addresses: DTIC Cameron Station Alexandria, VA 22314 703/274-7633 NTIS Department of Commerce 5285 Port Royal Road Springfield, VA 22161 703/487-4650 The Guide is available for downloading from the AdaIC's Internet host computer (sw-eng.falls-church.va.us). Getting connected to the AdaIC Internet host The AdaIC's Internet host is sw-eng.falls-church.va.us (IP address 199.75.54.2). The Ada host is available to all Internet users 24-hours a day via the following Internet access, search, and retrieval utilities: anonymous file transfer protocol (ftp) ftp sw-eng.falls-church.va.us login: anonymous password: ftpmail To obtain complete instructions, send e-mail to: ftpmail@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us -- with the word "help" in the subject line. Gopher gopher sw-eng.falls-church.va.us Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) sw-eng.falls-church.va.us World Wide Web (WWW) http://sw-eng.falls-church.va.us/ Direct any questions concerning access to action@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us or to the AdaIC telephone help-desk staff at 1/800-AdaIC-11 (232-4211) or 703/681-2466. Getting connected without Internet access Computer users who don't have Internet access may access Ada information on the AdaIC Internet host via our dial-up line. The phone number is: 703/681-2845. Set your communications parameters as follows: Baud Rate: 300-28,800 Data bits: 8 Parity: None Stop Bits: 1 Flow Control: XON/XOFF Emulation: VT100 Once a connection is achieved, login: guest password: Ada4sw-eng Direct any questions concerning access to the AdaIC telephone help-desk staff at 1/800-AdaIC-11 (232-4211) or 703/681-2466. 1990 House reasoning The following appeared in House Report 101-822, which accompanied the original House-passed version of H.R. 5803. "Ada Programming Language. -- The Department of Defense developed Ada to reduce the cost of development and support of software systems written in the hundreds of languages used by the DOD through the early 1980s. Beside the training economies of scale arising from a common language, Ada enables software cost reduction in several other ways: (1) its constructs have been chosen to be building blocks for disciplined software engineering; (2) its internal checking inhibits errors in large systems lying beyond the feasibility of manual checking; and (3) its separation of software module interfaces from their implementations facilitates and encourages reuse of already-built and tested program parts. While each of these advantages is important, Ada's encouragement of software engineering is fundamental. Software practitioners increasingly believe the application of engineering disciplines is the only currently-feasible avenue toward controlling unbridled software cost escalation in ever-larger and more complex systems. In March, 1987, the Deputy Secretary of Defense mandated use of Ada in DOD weapons systems and strongly recommended it for other DOD applications. This mandate has stimulated the development of commercially-available Ada compilers and support tools that are fully responsive to almost all DOD requirements. However, there are still too many other languages being used in the DOD, and thus the cost benefits of Ada are being substantially delayed. Therefore, the Committee has included a new general provision, Section 8084, that enforces the DOD policy to make use of Ada mandatory. It will remove any doubt of full DOD transition to Ada, particularly in other than weapons systems applications. It will stimulate DOD to move forward quickly with Ada-based software engineering education and cataloguing/reuse systems. In addition, U.S. and commercial users have already expanded tremendously the use of Ada and Ada-related technology. The DOD, by extending its Ada mandate, can leverage off these commercial advances. Navy Ada is considered to be the same as Ada for the purposes of this legislation, and the term Ada is otherwise defined by ANSI/MIL-STD-1815. The Committee envisions that the Office of the Secretary of Defense will administer the general provision in a manner that prevents disruption to weapon systems that are well into development. The Committee directs that applications using or currently planning to use the Enhanced Modular Signal Processor (EMSP) be exempted from mandatory use of Ada as a matter of policy." ********************** Flyer P036-0894c mandate.txt The Ada Information Clearinghouse updates this document on a regular basis. The current version can be found on the AdaIC's Internet host: sw-eng.falls-church.va.us The views, opinions, and findings contained in this report are those of the author(s) and should not be construed as an official Agency position, policy, or decision, unless so designated by other official documentation. Copyright 1993, 1994. IIT Research Institute. All rights assigned to the US Government (Ada Joint Program Office). Permission to reprint this flyer, in whole or in part, is granted, provided the AdaIC is acknowledged as the source. Ada Information Clearinghouse (AdaIC) P.O. Box 1866 Falls Church, VA 22041 Phone: 800/232-4211 or 703/681-2466 Fax: 703/681-2869 E-mail: adainfo@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us The AdaIC is sponsored by the Defense Information Systems Agency's Ada Joint Program Office (DOD/DISA/JIEO/CFSW/AJPO), and operated by IIT Research Institute.