Lockheed/NSWC White Oak ANSI-SQL to Ada Prototype

Folks,

1. We are building a Logistics Management Decision Support System (LMDSS) application on the IBM RS/6000 which requires an Ada to ORACLE binding. Recently, one of our software engineers found in some repository on the internet "A Prototype Binding of ANSI-Standard SQL to Ada" which was developed by Lockheed for the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) White Oak, Maryland under contract N60921-87-C-0293 back in 1988.
2. We would like to know how many other folks have used this binding, and what are their experiences. It looks promising. However, it was developed for SYBASE and SunOS. We have been using the Alsys compiler for the IBM RS/6000 AIX environment, but have been unable to successfully compile this Lockheed/NSWC White Oak binding using the Alsys compiler. We quickly purchased the IBM Ada/6000 compiler for the IBM RS/6000 as a backup. The Lockheed/NSWC White Oak binding appeared to compile cleanly, and without incident, using the IBM Ada/6000 compiler.
3. A potential drawback to the binding appears to be that you have to define all schemas, tables, and columns in Ada packages prior to actually generating any of the schemas, tables, and columns in the RDBMS. Now, this may actually be an advantage vis-a-vis data validation and type checking, but from our perspective, we must access massive amounts of legacy data (up to 100 gigabytes worst case), and desire to blast through it, even by brute force, in support of a decision support system application. So in many cases, the ORACLE tables are already out there, defined and generated by other information systems. We have in my opinion adequate horsepower, an IBM RS/6000 Model 970 with 256 megabytes of RAM, which can be upgraded to 1,024 megabytes RAM if necessary. Furthermore, we can go to a RAID solution with an HIPPI interface for our data base, but we hope that SCSI-2 will be adequate.
4. Are there better solutions which do not chain us to one particular ANSI-SQL RDBMS vendor? We have already decided against ORACLE's PRO*Ada based upon previous feedback. We desire our source code to be as RDBMS vendor and compiler vendor independent as possible, within reason (financial resources).
5. How much effort will it take on the part of our software engineers to take this Lockheed/NSWC White Oak binding and implement it between Ada and ORACLE under IBM AIX? Any ideas?
6. How painful or easy is this Lockheed/NSWC White Oak binding on the Data Base Administrator (DBA) vis-a-vis conventional DBA methods?
7. Is the Lockheed/NSWC White Oak binding robust and field tested in production applications?
8. Is this the latest and greatest ANSI SQL to Ada binding available?
9. I suspect there are one or more FAQs that specifically address the Lockheed/NSWC White Oak binding. If so, please advise me of where they can be found, and accept my apologies for bring up an issue yet again that has probably been beaten to death.
10. Any comments/suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Please direct them to:

                   air4114a_at_oasys.dt.navy.mil

Very Respectfully,
Steve Carr
CDR, SC, USN
LMDSS Software Engineering Project Manager Naval Air Systems Command (AIR-4114A)
Washington, DC 20361-4110
703-692-5661, 703-692-5690, 703-746-0696, 703-746-0842 FAX 703-692-8587 Received on Sun Apr 11 1993 - 05:13:45 CEST