CCO-MARS'96 integrating HOOD, Ada, and XInAda in a full Ada operational software project

Abstract

The development of the “CCO MARS'96” system for the French space agency, CNES, has proved a very enriching experience concerning the integration of HOOD, Ada, and XInAda in an operational project. The two main points of interest are one in the area of Man Machine Interfaces (MMIs), and the other in the development cycle of an operational product using HOOD and Ada technology. Developing a full Ada MMI using XInAda and Ada's tasking features turned to be a successful challenge that yielded important guidelines for the future design of such software applications. The MMI and its interface to the rest of the software were modeled using the HOOD method. A homogeneous design for the entire product was thus achieved as HOOD was the method chosen to cover the whole development cycle. As a consequence of this technical integration, large intrinsic development security and confidence were obtained even though glitches made the overall process tedious; but the lessons learned from the mishaps are now invaluable.