IRTAW

Before this liaison agreement can be final, it must be approved by JTC1. However, the Chair of WG9 intends to proceed with implementation of the liaison arrangements in anticipation of approval by JTC1. We strongly believe that such a liaison will be important to the SIGAda community, as it will provide us with the opportunity of having input to the evolving Ada language specification. The benefits to SIGAda are identified in the draft. In addition, this will also provide extra value to a SIGAda membership, in that:• SIGAda members will be allowed to see the draft WG9 documentation for the next Ada Standard in its early stages. [This documentation has not been made available to us before.]• SIGAda members will be allowed (collectively) to comment on the draft WG9 documentation, thus potentially impacting the standard;• SIGAda members will have an important role in the management of Ada Application Program Interfaces (APIs); and• SIGAda members (collectively) can play a more active role in the evolution of the Ada standard should they choose to do so.We are already addressing ways in which SIGAda and Ada-Europe can work more closely with WG9. One of the first initiatives is to address a method to manage Ada APIs. Currently the vast majority of Ada bindings to APIs fall into the category of unmanaged. These Ada bindings are frequently hard to find. Once found there is frequently little information concerning how to best use the API nor information on lessons learned from its use. Frequently these bindings do not evolve with updates to the base API, needed maintenance, or Ada language changes. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 WG9 has requested that SIGAda and Ada-Europe propose a mechanism for managing Ada Bindings that are not covered already via formal standards. These Ada Bindings can then be recommended by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 WG9 as defacto standards for use in Ada application development. A very draft plan, the Plan for Ada Application Program Interfaces (API) Management, has been proposed that would provide a lightweight process to manage Ada Bindings available to the Ada community without the formalism required by an ISO standard. The intent is that Ada-Europe, SIGAda, and WG9 can work together to provide a valuable service to the Ada community for managing Ada bindings to APIs. The draft plan is presented in pages 134-138 of this Ada Letters. There is no consensus on this plan and any final plan may look totally different. Please look it over and provide comments to Mr. Clyde Roby at <[email protected]> and <[email protected]>. If you are interested is serving as the APIWG Chair or Co-chair for an API, please contact Mr. Clyde Roby. He has volunteered to serve as Acting Chair of the APIWG and is planning a workshop at SIGAda 2002 in Houston, Texas.We are planning for our next conference to be at Houston/Clear Lake, Texas from 8-12 December 2002. The venue will be at the Holiday Inn/NASA, right across the way from the NASA Space Center. We are planning a NASA SIGAda 2002 activity, which should be interesting. For more information, please see: http://www.acm.org/sigada/conf/sigada2002. I am looking forward to seeing you there!