ADA to Java - Thales (EATMS) Indepth

History: The Eurocat Air Traffic Management System (EATMS) is used in 16 European countries and Australia.  This system, written in legacy Ada 83, became subject to a modernization initiative in 2005. As a result, Thales selected The Software Revolution, Inc. (TSRI).  This choice was made, because of TSRI’s proven track record in many successful modernization projects.  In addition, the need for “zero distortion” in the code transformation made TSRI’s 100% automated processes far more desirable than a manual re-write method.

Challenge: TSRI had achieved success in several prior Ada transformation projects.  As a result TSRI’s JANUS Studio^®    already had very robust Ada capabilities. Still, this project presented several challenges stemming from its requirements for stringent accuracy, European coding safety standards, and unique performance metrics. 

The Trajectory Prediction Manger (TPM) was chosen for the modernization pilot.  TPM consisted of 17,000 lines of Ada 83, which TSRI transformed into two equivalent applications, one in C++ and one in Java.  This phase of the project took 5 weeks.

Once transformed, rigorous testing was performed to ensure accuracy and to determine whether C++ or Java would be the target language of choice. Both the C++ and Java produced no distortion of the original Ada application; however the Java code produced some erratic runtime performance metrics.  Thales engineers worked in concert with TSRI’s software experts to re-factor the Java code and resolve these performance issues.  Initially some of the performance enhancements were done by hand.  However, once a manual solution was proven effective, TSRI engineers wrote a transformation rule into JANUS Studio^®     to automate the enhancement.  This was done to insure uniformity and accuracy of future transformations.  TSRI also provided a Transformation Blueprint ^®, that is, an HTML documentation that allows a side-by-side comparison of the Ada TPM and the Java/C++ TPM. 

Results: Following the completion of the pilot, Java was chosen as the target language and a complete modernization of the French version of EATMS was begun.  This phase of the project, modernizing over 1.3 million LOC, was completed in 12 months.  All testing and certification of EATMS has now been completed.  Thales will put the transformed French version EATMS into service in 2010.

Thales has since contracted with TSRI for equally successful Ada transformation projects involving the Swedish/Danish and Australian versions of EATMS.  To date, TSRI has contracted with Thales in modernizing of over 1.7 Million lines of Ada, (various dialects), into fully functional Java systems.

TSRI
Greg Tadlock
Vice President of Sales
Phone: (425) 284-2770
Fax:       (425) 284-2785

information@tsri.com