> So, what is the purpose of the Ada 95 Information Systems Annex? To provide an alternative (the only, I think) to writing in either Cobol or PL/I. (There are exellent Cobol environments for the PC environment, BTW). > And why do so many businesses depend on financial calculations on > PC's running Excel programmed using VBA? My perspective is probably skewed since I worked extensively for banks and insurance companies. I never encountered a situation where any kind of real calculation or bookkeeping was done on PC's or in any other language than Cobol or PL/I. Jerry.