Wanna hear something really cool?

Amen-Moses · May 14, 2003

As you may have gathered from my previous posts (if you read em that is) as a day job I work as a systems integrator/software developer on a huge air traffic control project here in the UK (in fact it is the largest, most modern one in the world).

This involves mainly working in C and Ada on unix high end workstations (IBM RS6000s) interconnected to legacy mainframes which are responsible for the actual route processing portion of the flight data. My "bit" so to speak is the flight data distribution servers which take the data stream from the legacy systems and pass it down to the workstations that the controllers sit in front of, I also developed that part of the system that emulates the legacy systems when the data links fail for whatever reason so we get 24/7 functionality.

Yesterday I brought part of the source code from the system home and compiled it on my iMac (with a bit of code change involved here and there), I did this partly due to the fact that we are looking at the possibility of transitioning the system to the PPC range of IBM servers and mostly so I could get paid to sit in front of my dome-bot.

Guess what, it works! I have part of a billion dollar air traffic management system running on my iMac!

Cool or what.

There is an advert for Ada portability if ever I saw one.

Amen-Moses

rman · May 14, 2003

Now that is kool.

What kind of risc boxes are you using.

Are they IBM Risc running AIX?

Amen-Moses · May 14, 2003

rman said:
Are they IBM Risc running AIX?

Yep, AIX 3.5 & 4.1.

We're wanting to go to 5.1 but the management are not yet convinced.

Amen-Moses

rman · May 14, 2003

You may want to start looking at AIX 5.2 instead of 5.1L. I know if it is not out yet, it will be soon. I have several server running 4.3.3 that need to be upgraded, so I am in the same place you are.

Amen-Moses · May 14, 2003

rman said:
You may want to start looking at AIX 5.2 instead of 5.1L. I know if it is not out yet, it will be soon. I have several server running 4.3.3 that need to be upgraded, so I am in the same place you are.

Our penny pinching metric waving manager types don't even want to step all boxes to 4.n let alone 5.2!

The big problem I have is that IBM no longer supports 3.5 and my Ada development stuff is so far behind that the software manufacturers can't even remember producing it!

Open source is so much better because with virtually free upgrades every few months this problem does not occur, our software (i.e the Air Traffic Management system is up to version N9.1 and I pointed out to the management that if someone asked me to support N2.3 it would be impossible, we no longer keep that version, so why should we expect IBM or OCS to honour an equally old version of their software? So far my rhetoric has fallen on deaf ears but I will persevere.

Linux on IBM Power4's with Ada 95 is my panacea btw.

(or a bunch of Airport ready PowerBooks, that way the controllers could go to the smoking hut and still control the airspace

Amen-Moses

Graphite · May 14, 2003

wow, thats really cool... ull have to share more info!

rman · May 14, 2003

Linux on IBM Power4's with Ada 95

I agree, that definitely a good thing.

Amen-Moses · May 15, 2003

Graphite said:
wow, thats really cool... ull have to share more info!

It's pretty boring actually, I've ported a part of the engineering system rather than the operational stuff (I don't have a 36" Sony or a Barco graphics driver for a start

).

I'm trying to think of a use for it now I have it running, basically it is a simulator for one of the legacy systems which is script driven so the Ada portion manhandles script inputs and generates outputs mimicking the legacy system, we use it for "black-box" testing so I may find a use for it as a test harness for other more exciting offerings, it all depends on what projects I decide to engage in on the Mac.

Amen-Moses

Graphite · May 15, 2003

ah well at any rate, still cool!
just makes me wana try something daring like that...