Software Development System Product Announcement

[Richard Harter]

[------ Warning: Commercial Proprietary Software Announcement -------]

Product Name:	The Aide-De-Camp (TM) System.
Company:	Software Maintenance and Development Systems, Inc.
Address:	PO Box 555, Concord MA 01742
Net Address:	cca!g-rh
Machines:	VAX, Pyramid, Apollo, Cadmus, PDP, Masscomp (currently)
		Sun, Prime, AT&T, Plexus, Data General, Perkin Elmer,
		NEC, and others (near future)
Oper. Systems:	UNIX (III, V, 4.1bsd, 4.2bsd), XENIX, VMS (currently)
		Primos, Perkin Elmer OS, others (near future)
Pricing:	Variable, depending on machine -- $5k to $25K, binary
		licenses.  Discounts for multiple machines, restricted
		and unrestricted site licenses available.  Source
		licenses available.
Language:	Vanilla C
Memory:		Program space ~180K (VAX 780), data space as much as 500K,
		depending on usage.
Availability:	Now.

Synopsis:
	The Aide-De-Camp system is a software engineering development
system.  The system has two major functions; it manages a software
information database and it provides a superior version management
system.  It is designed to be a central utility for software project
development.

Description:
	The Aide-De-Camp system is an interactive manager of a software
database.  The database contains a user defined dictionary of software
terms, dependency relationship tables (history controlled), source code
files (history controlled), user defined attribute tables, history tables,
names of people, control lists, etc.

	Predefined relationships include: calls (as in one function calls
another), contains (a file contains a function), includes (a file includes
another file), refers (one entity refers to another), is (an entity has
an attribute), and depends (user defined dependency between entities).
Relationship information can be entered interactively; a program which
scans C files and produces relationship information automatically in a
form suitable for input to the ADC system comes with the package.

	The history control subsystem is integrated into the system.
The Aide-De-Camp (ADC) history control subsystem compares favorably
with SCCS and RCS in the following respects:

(1)	ADC Version control is software project wide.
(2)	ADC change sets (deltas) are independently reversible.
(3)	Relationships are history controlled as well as source.
(4)	ADC version control (and databases) are transportable
	across operating systems.
(5)	ADC change sets can contain changes to several files
(6)	Concurrent development and migration of change sets from
	one independent version to another is supported.

	On line query of a function or file gives, the date and author
of definition and installation, the true name (if aliased), and the
revision history.  Queries of functions also give the name of the
file that it is in, the name of all functions called, the name of all
functions calling it, and the names of all other functions in the file,
and the list of all files included by the file containing the function.
Queries of files are similar.  All queries print out entity abstracts
(documentation file(s)) for the entity if they exist.  Cross references
to related information is also given.

	Printed reports can be produced.  Master reports include
cross referenced call trees for all programs, full dependency table
printouts (both ways) for all relationships, the software dictionary,
detailed change history for the software being managed, descriptions
of all versions and control lists, and more.  Annotated source listings
give a full descriptive prolog which includes revision history,
dependency information and more.  Source code lines are annotated with
a line number, the originating change set, and the chronological
line numbers.

	List of entities such as functions, files, and change sets can
be created.  Most commands accept lists as arguments.  List building
is powerful; simple commands give the list of all files changed by
a list of change sets, the list of all files containing procedures
calling any procedure in a list of files, etc.  Commands are generally
smart about translating procedures into files and vice versa.  For
example, you can tell the system to write a list of procedures to
your directory and it will write the correct version of the files
containing those procedures from the database to your directory.
A command to write make files is included.

Answers to common questions:

(1) Names are restricted to 127 bytes.  There is no limit on
length of commands or on number of commands stacked other than
operating system limits on available memory.

(2) The Aide-De-Camp system is language independent.  To a large
extent it is operating system independent.  Aide-De-Camp databases
can be transported from one machine to another.

(3) Aliases can be defined and removed.  Anything can be renamed,
including ADC system commands.

(4) Databases are secure against system crashes (barring hard disk
failures.)  Database contents are never overwritten during updates.
Currently the system only permits one user at a time to have write
access to a database; multiple read accesses are permitted.

	For more information, write to SMDS Inc., PO Box 555, Concord
MA 01742, send a message to me via Usenet (cca!g-rh), or telephone us
at 617-369-7398.

				Richard Harter

Aide-De-Camp is a trademark of Software Maintenance and Development
Systems, UNIX is a trademark of AT&T, VAX and PDP are trademarks
of Digital Equipment Corporation, XENIX is a trademark, VMS may be
a trademark, and vendor names are probably trademarks.