Gene,

Thanks for your insights regarding the Ada market.  You made some
excellent points that I'm sure I'll find helpful.

In response to a few questions you asked:

>Which "new processors"
>are your colleagues considering using on which there is little or no Ada
>support?  If there is any reasonable business case for moving an Ada
>compiler to a new processor, pretty much any Ada vendor would do it.  Are
>you or your colleagues aware of business opportunities (ie, projects that
>want to buy tools) for Ada on currently unsupported "new" processors?  If
>so, I would think all the Ada vendors (not just the ones on Team-Ada) would
>be interested in them.

I think the concern is not so much any particular current processor,
but the idea that when new hardware emerges in a year or two, there
may be a greater lag in the availability of support for Ada compilers
than for the more "popular" languages.  This would make it difficult
to move existing systems to a new hardware platform.  We have
had some trouble with this kind of thing not too many years ago
(e.g., with the 68060, which prompted us to switch to a VADS
compiler a while back).  Now that the Ada 95 transition is settling
down, I'm not sure how real this problem is anymore.  In particular,
some code generators are shared between C++ and Ada compilers, so I'd
expect little lag in those cases.

>
>Gene Ouye <[log in to unmask]>
>
>Apex Ada NT Product Manager                     phone:  408-863-5054
>Rational Software Corporation           cell:   650-465-2541
>18880 Homestead Road                            fax:    408-863-5075
>Cupertino, CA 95014                             email:  [log in to unmask]
>

- Jim