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The cost of software today consumes over ten percent of the DoD budget. Software costs, complexity, and size continue to rise because of the ever increasing dependence of weapons and general purpose systems on computers. Software engineering, the Ada programming language, and efforts to determine the performance and risk of software development organizations by measuring process maturity represent key initiatives by the DoD to improve the quality, reliability, and maintainability of the software DoD buys. This study examines and describes each of these areas based on current literature and interviews with officers of 37 companies engaged in software development for command, control, and communications systems.

This study examines the uses of Tell Me More (TMM) software among engineering students in Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP). The study aims at finding students' abilities in retaining words learnt through Pre-test and Delayed Recall Post-test. The study also aims at identifying their preferences and challenges in using TMM. The study employed 43 students that were required to take vocabulary tests and participated in interviews to gauge their perceptions of using TMM. Results showed that there was a significant increase in the tests administered. The qualitative findings showed that students preferred the drag-and-drop feature in the software; among others. Yet, there were challenges in imitating the native-speaker in pronouncing target words, accessing TMM outside class hours and linking target words with its meaning. These findings provide empirical data for the use of computers in learning vocabulary.

This study examines the uses of Tell Me More (TMM) software among engineering students in Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP). The study aims at finding students' abilities in retaining words learnt through Pre-test and Delayed Recall Post-test. The study also aims at identifying their preferences and challenges in using TMM. The study employed 43 students that were required to take vocabulary tests and participated in interviews to gauge their perceptions of using TMM. Results showed that there was a significant increase in the tests administered. The qualitative findings showed that students preferred the drag-and-drop feature in the software; among others. Yet, there were challenges in imitating the native-speaker in pronouncing target words, accessing TMM outside class hours and linking target words with its meaning. These findings provide empirical data for the use of computers in learning vocabulary.

Our programming languages have been developed for the single machine programming model, while our current computing environment is distributed and parallel. For example, web applications are programs that run on three different machines, client, server, and database. This results in boilerplate code for encoding communication between layers, and it leads to polyglot programming with limited cross language consistency checking, leading to late detection of failures. Domain-specific languages (DSLs) address these problems by providing abstractions and notations that allow direct and understandable expression of domain concepts instead of encoding these in a lower level programming language. Since DSLs are typically used by a smaller audience, efficient design and implementation of DSLs is crucial to make introduction possible at all. To enable software engineers to effectively design, implement, and apply domain-specific languages, we have developed the Spoofax Language Workbench, an integrated development environment (IDE) for interactive definition for languages and their IDEs based on declarative language definitions. Spoofax supports editing of language definitions and use of editors generated from those definitions in the same environment. With Spoofax we have developed WebDSL and Mobl. WebDSL is a DSL for development of web applications, which integrates sub-languages for data modeling, UI templates, access control, and data validation from which generate Java, SQL, and JavaScript code is generated to run on server, database, and browser. Mobl is a high-level declarative language for mobile web applications, which generates HTML5 applications that run in the browser. Both languages provide full compile-time cross-concern consistency checking. In this talk, I will present the Mobl language and discuss its construction using Spoofax. http://spoofax.org http://webdsl.org http://mobl-lang.org

Software development is widely considered to be a bottleneck in the development of complex systems, both in terms of development and in terms of maintenance of deployed systems. Cost of software development and maintenance can also be very high. One approach to reducing costs and relieving this bottleneck is increasing the reuse of software designs and software components. A method for achieving such reuse is a software parts composition system. Such a system consists of a language for modeling software parts and their interfaces, a catalog of existing parts, an editor for combining parts, and a code generator that takes a specification and generates code for that application in the target language. The Advanced Software Development Workstation is intended to be an expert system shell designed to provide the capabilities of a software part composition system.

The computer program for the Advanced Software Development Workstation is presented.

The computer program for the Advanced Software Development Workstation is presented.

What is the best programming language in software engineering?

The Engineering Scripting Language (ESL) is a language designed to allow nonprogramming users to write Higher Order Language (HOL) programs by drawing directed graphs to represent the program and having the system generate the corresponding program in HOL. The ESL system supports user generation of HOL programs through the manipulation of directed graphs. The components of this graphs (nodes, ports, and connectors) are objects each of which has its own properties and property values. The purpose of the ESL graphical editor is to allow the user to create or edit graph objects which represent programs.

The user guide of verification and validation (V&V) tools for the Automated Engineering Design (AED) language is specifically written to update the information found in several documents pertaining to the automated verification of flight software tools. The intent is to provide, in one document, all the information necessary to adequately prepare a run to use the AED V&V tools. No attempt is made to discuss the FORTRAN V&V tools since they were not updated and are not currently active. Additionally, the current descriptions of the AED V&V tools are contained and provides information to augment the NASA TM 84276. The AED V&V tools are accessed from the digital flight control systems verification laboratory (DFCSVL) via a PDP-11/60 digital computer. The AED V&V tool interface handlers on the PDP-11/60 generate a Univac run stream which is transmitted to the Univac via a Remote Job Entry (RJE) link. Job execution takes place on the Univac 1100 and the job output is transmitted back to the DFCSVL and stored as a PDP-11/60 printfile.

This report explains some of the concepts of the ESL prototype and summarizes some of the lessons learned in using the prototype for implementing the Flight Mechanics Tool Kit (FMToolKit) series of Ada programs.

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This research investigated the perceived Ada and software engineering education needs of software managers throughout the Air Force and provided recommendations to Air Staff for developing the education. Since the Department of Defense mandated all DOD agencies use the Ada programming language for software development, the education of the personnel who have to support the policy has lagged behind the implementation Ada is not a simple language to use and is only fully effective if used with sound software engineering principles. A survey was given to Air Force mid-level personnel who manage software in some capacity. Of the software personnel surveyed, 48 percent indicated that Ada education would help. Less than 45 percent of the personnel who work with Ada have had a formal course in using the language while over 70 percent of the people have had some form of formal software engineering education. This research also investigated the required frequency of education. The respondents indicated that the frequency (periodic or as-needed) should depend on the nature of the individuals job and rank or position.

This report describes a software interface (or binding) for supporting concurrent development of electronic hardware designed in Very High Speed Integrated Circuits (VHSIC) Hardware Description Language (VHDL) with software programmed in Ada 95. The purpose of this binding is to provide an initial framework from which future computer aided engineering (CAE) implementors can develop concurrent engineering capability into their work stations. This software binding includes VHDL calls to Ada 95 subprograms and functions using the new VHDL-93 'FOREIGN attribute and providing optional Ada 95 functionality in place of concurrent VHDL process statements to meet Ada 95 language rules expected by future Ada 95 compilers. A binding is also provided for Ada 95 calls to VHDL representations using new Ada 95 programs: Import, Export, and Convention. BNF descriptions were expanded to analyze constraint differences for consistent functionality across languages. Examples show VHDL processes synchronizing with Ada 95 tasks and Ada 95 remote procedure calls across partitions for distributed processing applications.

This report describes a software interface (or binding) for supporting concurrent development of electronic hardware designed in Very High Speed Integrated Circuits (VHSIC) Hardware Description Language (VHDL) with software programmed in Ada 95. The purpose of this binding is to provide an initial framework from which future computer aided engineering (CAE) implementors can develop concurrent engineering capability into their work stations. This software binding includes VHDL calls to Ada 95 subprograms and functions using the new VHDL-93 'FOREIGN attribute and providing optional Ada 95 functionality in place of concurrent VHDL process statements to meet Ada 95 language rules expected by future Ada 95 compilers. A binding is also provided for Ada 95 calls to VHDL representations using new Ada 95 programs: Import, Export, and Convention. BNF descriptions were expanded to analyze constraint differences for consistent functionality across languages. Examples show VHDL processes synchronizing with Ada 95 tasks and Ada 95 remote procedure calls across partitions for distributed processing applications.