Northrop Grumman Information Technology (NGIT)

US Air Force and US Navy

Joint Mission Planning System (JMPS)

Ada to C++

History: The Joint Mission Planning System (JMPS) is a cooperative effort between the US Air Force and US Navy. JMPS will significantly enhance command and control in support of all four Joint Vision 2010 concepts and provide the mission planning capability to collect, process, analyze, and disseminate information, while denying an adversary the ability to do the same. Northrop Grumman Information Technology (NGIT) was selected in 1999 to develop JMPS Version 1.0 (JV1). In support of the JMPS Modernization Project, NGIT requested that TSRI demonstrate the feasibility of automated Ada to C++ transformation.

Challenge: TSRI transformed a sample of JMPS, originally written in Ada, into C++. Ada is a powerful language developed by the DoD for mission critical applications. Ada is a strongly typed language with complex semantics that are difficult to replicate in C++ with perfect accuracy.

Results: Using a JMPS sample of Ada code, TSRI carried out a fully automated transformation into C++. Using metrics gathered from this transformation, the customers concluded that a fully automated transformation of JMPS Ada code into C++ was technically feasible. Furthermore, they concluded that such automated methods offered significantly lower costs, reduced schedule times, and provided modern code of equal or better quality than manual methods.