What if all of Team Ada collaborated and built some tools to allow Ada to
build/use gui/non-gui COM/DCOM components?

Particularly, OIS and Software A.G. could get together with the Ada Compiler
vendors to come up with something quite synergetic and would complement the
entire Ada Industry.  This would permit all the Ada developers to
deliver/sell products to the Windows 95/98/NT markets.  Another important
point would be to permit Ada components to be reused by other languages such
as VB/C++/Delphi in a transparent manner.  Presently Ada does have the
capacity to use Com Components however the tool support is very weak.  I
also understand there is one gentleman( [log in to unmask]) that has succeeded
in using(but not making) a COM component from an Ada executeable.
http://www.botton.com/ada/os/com-simple.html .  I tried this one myself with
gnat and msvc 6 and it works like a charm.
There is another gentleman( Rob Veenker [mailto:[log in to unmask]]) who has
succeeded in using(but not making) an OLE component. Mr. Veenker's comments:
"I also tried to create a word.basic object, and this works too ! It's just
that the typelib is rather large and most methods use more parameters. Maybe
it is possible to create a typelib parser that generates Ada packages :-)"
Here it is:
( <<ole.zip>> )

I have approached some Ada compiler vendors on this weakness(of not being
able to build/use gui/non-gui COM/DCOM components) in their toolset.  All
the Ada compiler vendors are complementary to each other, in other words
they both share a piece of the same pie.  Instead of competing on this
issue, they could cooperate in order to make their pie bigger and tastier.
I read a good book called "co-opetition" regarding this different
perspective.  I highly recommend it.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.
--
Santé bonheur!

David Marceau
Programmer/Analyst - Firepower Systems
Land Software Engineering Centre - DND Canada
[log in to unmask]
613.995.1126