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> I don’t think it ended well. https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-project-summary.html https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-project-summary.html would

> I don’t think it ended well. https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-project-summary.html https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-project-summary.html would suggest otherwise

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
The US version flamed out, in spectacular fashion. The European one, however, worked. Another poster put up links ([0], [1]). [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160601100527/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1993-04-25/flying-in-place-the-faas-air-control-fiasco https://web.archive.org/web/20160601100527/http://www.bloomb... (Unpaywalled) [1] https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Central_Flow_Management_Unit_(CFMU) https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Central_Flow_Management_... It wasn't a ding at Ada. However, big projects (regardless of the toolset) need to be well-managed.
- egberts1 5y ago
  Sure wasn’t a ding against Ada. It appeared that mismanagement and misprioritization of the huge ATC wish list and a failure of system engineering to factor limited system resources … then to its priority list. A different US contractor (that I can’t recall) apparently did ATC better and faster but for a set of different customers (also in Ada). It must have been when “you don’t get fire for hiring IBM” was a mantra then.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    I hate to defend IBM, but they did have a track record of building out massive systems like this. I’d guess the 80s political climate and more general incompetence at the agency and political level was a bigger issue than the vendors and integrators.
  - sparcpile 5y ago
    The program's name was AAS, the Advanced Automation System. It was designed to be a full end-to-end system replacement for the HOST mainframe systems that were the FAA's backbone. This included terminal, en-route, oceanic, and every other system that was managing aircraft. AAS is discussed as a failure because it had significant mission and requirements creep. FAA kept on piling on requirements and IBM kept saying yes. The FAA also had issues managing it because it was so large. It was a multi-billion program with millions of SLOC in the early 90s. Simply put, this was a not a cat video website. The tool suite was on AIX 3.2.5 running on RS/6000s using CMVC for source code management. This was all designed in the mid-80s with implementation starting in the late 80s through the mid 90s. AAS was originally designed after the mass firings of the ATC specialists and the shutdown of PATCO, the original ATC union. AAS was actually a entire suite of programs. AAS was overall program and funding vehicle. IBM Federal deployed a few of the sub-programs like ISSS, TCCC, and others successfully to the FAA. It was originally developed by IBM Federal Systems and deployed on then-new RS/6000s. AAS failed because of mission creep and the fact it was entirely too large. The program ended after IBM Federal Systems was sold off to Loral and then merged into Lockheed Martin. The head of the ATC group at the time, Bob Stevens, discovered that LM would make more money if FAA cancelled the project and split it up into much smaller programs. Bob called up the FAA Administrator and made the deal to cancel the program since the scope creep was too much. FAA had already sent out a couple of cure letters to get things back on track, but this time the FAA agreed that it was time to cut bait on it. Initially, what was the en-route portion of AAS was re-done as the Display System Replacement (DSR), which replaced the radar and data positions in the en-route facilities. The concepts of AAS were then rolled into NextGen, which is the FAA's family of programs to modernize its ATC systems. Ada was used (originally OC Systems's Ada83 and Ada95 PowerAda compilers) for everything in AAS. An Ada-based middleware called FlightDeck was developed to implement all the underlying libraries and subsystems that you need for highly available applications for AAS, including clustering, failover, heartbeats, monotonic time, and multiple levels of redundancy. That middleware is still being today for the systems that IBM Federal, Lockheed Martin, and now Leidos are maintaining and developing like ERAM. After LM bought out what was IBM Federal, they sold it off in 2015 to Leidos because LM wanted to focus more on hardware. (Source: I work on the later programs that Ada is used on and listened to all stories that were told me by the people who worked on AAS).

> I don’t think it ended well. https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-project-summary.html https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-project-summary.html would suggest otherwise

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

The US version flamed out, in spectacular fashion. The European one, however, worked. Another poster put up links ([0], [1]). [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160601100527/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1993-04-25/flying-in-place-the-faas-air-control-fiasco https://web.archive.org/web/20160601100527/http://www.bloomb... (Unpaywalled) [1] https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Central_Flow_Management_Unit_(CFMU) https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Central_Flow_Management_... It wasn't a ding at Ada. However, big projects (regardless of the toolset) need to be well-managed.

egberts1 5y ago
Sure wasn’t a ding against Ada. It appeared that mismanagement and misprioritization of the huge ATC wish list and a failure of system engineering to factor limited system resources … then to its priority list. A different US contractor (that I can’t recall) apparently did ATC better and faster but for a set of different customers (also in Ada). It must have been when “you don’t get fire for hiring IBM” was a mantra then.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  I hate to defend IBM, but they did have a track record of building out massive systems like this. I’d guess the 80s political climate and more general incompetence at the agency and political level was a bigger issue than the vendors and integrators.
- sparcpile 5y ago
  The program's name was AAS, the Advanced Automation System. It was designed to be a full end-to-end system replacement for the HOST mainframe systems that were the FAA's backbone. This included terminal, en-route, oceanic, and every other system that was managing aircraft. AAS is discussed as a failure because it had significant mission and requirements creep. FAA kept on piling on requirements and IBM kept saying yes. The FAA also had issues managing it because it was so large. It was a multi-billion program with millions of SLOC in the early 90s. Simply put, this was a not a cat video website. The tool suite was on AIX 3.2.5 running on RS/6000s using CMVC for source code management. This was all designed in the mid-80s with implementation starting in the late 80s through the mid 90s. AAS was originally designed after the mass firings of the ATC specialists and the shutdown of PATCO, the original ATC union. AAS was actually a entire suite of programs. AAS was overall program and funding vehicle. IBM Federal deployed a few of the sub-programs like ISSS, TCCC, and others successfully to the FAA. It was originally developed by IBM Federal Systems and deployed on then-new RS/6000s. AAS failed because of mission creep and the fact it was entirely too large. The program ended after IBM Federal Systems was sold off to Loral and then merged into Lockheed Martin. The head of the ATC group at the time, Bob Stevens, discovered that LM would make more money if FAA cancelled the project and split it up into much smaller programs. Bob called up the FAA Administrator and made the deal to cancel the program since the scope creep was too much. FAA had already sent out a couple of cure letters to get things back on track, but this time the FAA agreed that it was time to cut bait on it. Initially, what was the en-route portion of AAS was re-done as the Display System Replacement (DSR), which replaced the radar and data positions in the en-route facilities. The concepts of AAS were then rolled into NextGen, which is the FAA's family of programs to modernize its ATC systems. Ada was used (originally OC Systems's Ada83 and Ada95 PowerAda compilers) for everything in AAS. An Ada-based middleware called FlightDeck was developed to implement all the underlying libraries and subsystems that you need for highly available applications for AAS, including clustering, failover, heartbeats, monotonic time, and multiple levels of redundancy. That middleware is still being today for the systems that IBM Federal, Lockheed Martin, and now Leidos are maintaining and developing like ERAM. After LM bought out what was IBM Federal, they sold it off in 2015 to Leidos because LM wanted to focus more on hardware. (Source: I work on the later programs that Ada is used on and listened to all stories that were told me by the people who worked on AAS).