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 developmen t process and its product . While, programmers who are most familiar with various assembly languages and FORTRAN may use structured programming, generally they are no t familiar with the other concepts. The problems with training programmers in Ada an d 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 th e 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, w e identify areas of success and difficulty in learning and using Ada as both a design an d coding language . Our results indicate where emphasis should be placed in Ada trainin g and in the development of tools and techniques for use with Ada . We also identif y metrics used to evaluate and predict the cost, quality, and maintainability of Ada programs.

N aA da is already required for use in (A"Our study attempts to meet several * -embedded software of the : goals. The first focuses on characteriUnited States Department of Defense. zation of the effort, the changes, and "--In time, more government agencies the errors of the project. The second .and private-sector companies will be considers how Ada was used on the .using Ada, yet it is not without its project. The third concerns evaluation problems. Though praised for being of the data collection and validation comprehensive, Ada has also been process, while the fourth concentrates Ada at GE. The findings in a software project developed by the Ada-specific metrics will not be diswill aid in the training, General Electric Company. The proj-cussed here except as they apply to this tool support, and ect was monitored by the University of project. methodology for future Maryland and GE to identify areas of Ada projects.success and difficulty in learning and Data sources and validation Access1on tror using Ada as both a design and a -TS -G--& coding language. Since productionFrom the start of the project, data "Il TA" quality Ada translators were not readi-was collected from a variety of -i -.. ly available, the study focused on sources. Change data, in particular, is _ training and early software devel-often gathered only after the code has opment.eocus on the use and ef-been compiled and entered into a feet of Ada onect, which was "system" for use by other project conducted primarily in PM>) Our members. In this project, however, all study also presents the major factors changes made after the text was on-line to consider before using Ada in soft-were included. Therefore, compariware development, particularly when sons with data of other projects may ell training in Ada is necessaryr-AIThbih be misleading. However, some of the manyofourconclusionsmayseemobdata will be presented with compilervious now, they were unexpected when detectable fault, eliminated so comthis project began.parisons can be made ,,ith the early ,0.