8:50 Mr. William Loftus (WPL Laboratories), opened the meeting with a welcome. The $100 fee charged for attending the working group sessions was discussed and it was agreed that volunteers should only be asked to pay a nominal fee if any. Mr. Loftus reviewed the Bindings WG history and mission (see slides). The mission includes: o management and technical issues o form subgroups to work on specific bindings; currently, - Common GUI subgroup (Robert Leif) - MS-Windows subgroup (Steven Case) - OMG/CORBA subgroup (Erik Worth) The ABWG mailing list is available as well as mailing lists for each subgroup (see slide). Mr. Loftus noted that there has been significant interest in the Common GUI. Mr. Loftus is collecting bindings papers that discuss bindings technology in various areas and invited other topics to be included in this collection: o C and C++ Interfaces (Michael Griffin) o Sets of Bindings for MS-Windows Applications (Steven Case) o CORBA (Erik Worth) o Binding via Data Structures (Dan Eilers) o Generalized SAME/DL Method of Binding (Marc Graham) o Government Program Management and Bindings (Stan Levine) o Software Management and Bindings (Robert Boulton) AdaIC is producing a list of bindings. There is an issue about making bindings developed for government agencies available for general distribution. Apparently there needs to be a sign off before any product can be generally available, and officials are generally reluctant to take responsibility. Stanley Levin said he required contractors to demonstrate bindings as part of proposal evaluation. 9:20 An issue about versions was briefly discussed and tabled. The issue was raised about where the documents produced by this WG should be maintained and/or published. The discussion generally revolved around the pros and cons of text versus graphics. The resolution was to keep both an ASCII and postscript version. There was some discussion about using a specification language for bindings such as h-to-c (sp?) which can preprocess into language specific bindings such as Ada packages (spec and body) or C. This produces a thin binding that could be used as a start for a thick binding. It was mentioned that the introduction to the POSIX standard includes a discussion about binding issues and alternatices. Although the ISO requested the IEEE WG to produce a language independent binding, the WG has declined due to lack of resources. A brief discussion about security issues concluded with a request for Ramash J. (sp?) to write a paper on security issues for bindings. A discussion about portability problems concluded that vendors should be involved in defining bindings. This should help users when they need to change compiler vendors, etc. 10:00 Issue: o Should bindings be govt. funded? Does that create a company to support a standard binding instead of making use of industry standards? Disussion: o DISA is trying to get vendors to move toward standards compliance. o Can you make a business case for customers to buy an application and then buy a binding for Ada? Don't forget the cost of support. o Is there a way to get Academia involved? They have their own agendas that may not match what is needed by the other communities. 10:20 30 minute break 11:00 Subgroup Presentations Everyone in attendance introduced themselves. Mr. Timothy W. Buescher presented an introduction to the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and the Ada Language Mappings to CORBA. The technical approach includes initially using Ada 83 and to build Interface Design Language (IDL) compiler outputs by hand. The CORBA subgroup is interacting with other organizations and have a Liaison agreement with the Object Management Group. 12:00 Lunch Break 1:15 Subgroup Presentations (continued) Ada 94 Mapping to OMG IDL DISA is involved in several standards activities such as OSF, OMG, etc. reviewed the history of OOT in the DoD including joining the OMG in May of 1993. CIM began an OOT Migration Study in October of 1993. DISA's support for CORBA includes: o ITSI BBS (Information Technology Standards Integrated Bulletin Board System). It usually takes less that 24 hours to get an account. o Research issues as needed. o Interact with OMG (including building an XOpen interface. Questions about the 94 mapping can be submitted to Bill (or establish a WG mailing list.) Mr. Bill Whitaker introduced another issue concerning the IEEE 12.26 Standard, ABBET (A Broad-Based Environment Test). ATLAS is a DoD standard for testing electronic equipment. The sub-committee purpose was to make a connection between Ada (in the factory) and the ATLAS testing language (in the field). There is now an Ada binding to ATLAS. IEEE 12.26.1 and .2 are approved and published and the F22 project is using these standards. IEEE 12.26.5 specifies the Ada binding to the 488 bus and was done by HP. IEEE 12.26.5 needs a CGM (Computer Graphics Metafile) interface. The Plug & Play Consortium has entered the game. 1:50 Brainstorming Mr. Loftus began a brainstorming session to identify bindings issues: o Getting vendors to release bindings to be maintained in the public domain o How do we keep bindings improving and maintain them? o Do we bind Ada 83, 9X? It may be possible to develop elegant, thin bindings in 9X that support software engineering. o It may be preferable to produce a guidebook on how to write bindings, taking a bottom up approach. o Mid-High level bindings should be seen differently from the low-level C binding. The upper bindings are improvements to the C Binding, and are more subject to interpretation. Extremely thin bindings may improve protability by making vendors build bindings in layers. o The thin binding is more a paint-over than a binding. There are other steps, languages, etc. 2:20 o Possibly an Ada Bindings Quality & Style Guide is needed. o Does anyone have a definitive guide on "interfacing"? Is CORBA such a guide? Not really. Having so many possibilities on each side of an interface makes such a general guide unlikely. o What is the Charter? A forum to present bindings and binding strategies to improve the quality of bindings throughout the Ada community. o Need to stimulate binding production and acceptance. Get consensus input. o Are we only interested in C? Not necessarily. OMG is interested in multiple languages--but it is really driven by the big players. o The Numerics WG produced a standard that is not defined in another language. The X interface was never owned by the producers. But in most cases, the producer of the standard owned the thin binding. After a brief discussion about balloting procedures, the attendees decided to use an informal, e-mail procedure for balloting which follows IEEE balloting informally. 2:40 Break 3:10 A Glimpse of Fresco Mr. Bill Beckwith (OIS, Inc.) presented a talk on FRESCO, a User Interface System (UIS). The problem with using MOTIF is it still has the MOTIF bugs. He is attempting to get universities to do graphics research (talking with Mike Feldman). To get on the mailing list, send a message to fresco_ada_request@ois.com SGI was interested in binding to a C++ implementation, however CORBA is a better alternative. 3:45 Mapping OMG IDL -> Ada9X Mr. Victor Giddings (MITRE) presented an overview of mapping an IDL to Ada9X. He pointed out that the Object Management Group (OMG) is a consortium of over 350 member companies which suggests there is already strong support for CORBA. The Interface Design Language (IDL) in the standard is implementation language independent, location transparent, and operating system independent. A mapping from IDL to Ada9X could make bindings obsolete; i.e. automatically generated from IDL. 4:15 Overiew and Design Philosophy 4:35 Completed Tuesday Morning The Bindings WG broke out into three (?) subgroups.