Banking software in Ada in Finland

Banking software in Ada in Finland

[Colin James 0621]

Archie produced the following addresses, all of which bounced mail:
sybus.sybus.com (147.243.1.1), sjx01.ts.tele.nokia.com (131.228.122.150),
netman.data.nokia.fi (131.228.16.120), noknic.nokia.com (131.228.6.10),
and larsf@data.nokia.se.

Request from anyone the valid internet address(es) for Nokia for info
re source code availability and licensing details for Ada banking
software as used in Finland.

Email is fine, or post if of general interest.

Thanks.

Colin James III    cjames@dsc.blm.gov
(Residence)
2080 Kipling St
Lakewood, CO  80215-1502

(303) 231 - 9437

Re: Banking software in Ada in Finland

[Poutanen Olavi]

In article <9304171233.aa07341@dsc.blm.gov> cjames@DSC.BLM.GOV (Colin James 062
1) writes:
...
>Request from anyone the valid internet address(es) for Nokia for info
>re source code availability and licensing details for Ada banking
>software as used in Finland.
>
>Email is fine, or post if of general interest.

Because I think the answer may be of general interest I'll post it publicly.

I worked at Nokia (actually in its software house subsidiary called Softplan)
at the time when "the Ada banking system in Finland" was developed and lived
through the intensive Ada-period at Nokia. With regard to licensing and source
code availability I think Nokia is not prepared for that. Anyway in that
respect you may call me as first contact.

But the actual answer (somewhat long, sorry) could be titled as:

The rise and fade-out of Ada at Nokia
-------------------------------------

Those of you who in the middle of 80s participated Ada-Europe/Tri-Ada
conferences may remember that in the official opening session speeches
the speaker usually gave a list of early Ada pioneers and mentioned also
Nokia and its Ada banking system in this context. Below I'll summarize my
perception how Nokia started to develop a banking system in Ada, what
portions of it actually are in Ada, and what is the status now.

Finland is a country of many nation-wide banks. Nokia was a dominant
banking system vendor. The mainframe computers were some of the big
brands (Honeywell, IBM, ...), but the branch office technology was Nokia
manufactured (all the equipments and computers at the branch office
including their software).

At the end of 70s the banks indicated that they soon will upgrade their
systems. What is Nokia's offer for upgrade?

Nokia proposed a PC/LAN based solution in the branch offices. It contained
intelligent 80186-based workstations for the clerks and a server machine
for the LAN. Where to get this server? It was decided that it will be 
developed as own design, i.e. starting from the chips, instruction
set design, operating system, programming language, file management,
systems software layer, etc. That was not felt to be a too big deal,
because the same was successfully done in the previous computer gene-
ration. There were no powerful (and cheap) enough machines and operating
systems, which would satisfy the needs. (Today there are 80386/486s with
OS/2 - and soon with NT -, Unix was for some reason disliked.)

The man, who led the work (and had led the previous generation machine
development as well) was very knowledgeable of what was state-of-the-art
in the field. There were 'capability based addressing', 'object-oriented
architecture', 'sound software engineering principles', etc. The goals
were quite ambitious. 

At the same time (c. 1980-81) the promise of Ada came around. It fitted
well in the picture. So the machine became Ada-programmable. Already in
the instruction set design and firmware Ada was taken into account
(c.f. Rational today?).

One special argument in favor for Ada was its promise of portability.
Already at that time it was seen that in the long run there is no future
for a small manufacturer with a closed proprietary environment. But if your
code is Ada there would be a better chance to save your investments.

So, the machine called Nokia MPS 10 was built and quite a lot of Ada code
developed: Operating system, an advanced Ada compilation system (first
a large subset Ada/MPS, then ANSI level Ada based on DDC-I's technology),
object management system (containing file management), command language
interpreter, a full-scale relational DBMS (having a novel Ada/SQL binding,
somewhat similar as in SAMeDL now), line communication layers, LAN-server
software, network control and file distribution software, utilities, bank
application specific code, etc., etc. - some 2 million lines of Ada
altogether.

In 1984-85 three bank deals were won with this 3-tier architecture
(workstations, branch office server, mainframe). One of those banks was
later merged to another bank and so there were two banks left. And still
today they have these MPS 10 machines with Ada code in their operational
bank system.

If I have understood it right in these bank systems there is not so
much of the actual bank application code written in Ada (such code, which
would 'drive' deposits, draws, loans, etc.). Instead MPS 10 handles many 
of the backbone functionalities like file serving to workstations, WAN
connections, file and new program version distributions from the central
site to branch offices, etc. 

The initial delivery was difficult. There were delays, performance problems,
not so good project management, quarrels with the customer. But finally the
sufficient robustness, functionality, performance and customer satisfaction
was found. Some of the problems can be attributed to Ada (the implementation
had some inefficiencies and it took some time to tune them out), but only
some. There were a lot of other problem sources as well.

The initial idea was that the bank personnel would develop in Ada much more
their application related code into MPS 10. They got Ada training, but after
the first enthusiasm they lost their Ada spirit. Sufficient critical mass
of them didn't grasp the Ada way of doing things. Some coded Ada still in the
old COBOL way, which was inefficient. The early experiences with (at that 
time) somewhat slow and sometimes crashing system were not encouraging.
Currently all Ada + MPS 10 maintenance is at Nokia (no problems with that
as such, Ada is easy to maintain).

MPS 10 had its role in Nokia's banking system offer. Some deals were won
with that offer and so Nokia successfully defended its big market share in
this business segment.

If looking at the MPS 10 machine and its Ada development alone it surely
consumed much more money than it earned. It was a much bigger and much more
difficult exercise than ever thought in the beginning. Soon it turned out
that MPS 10 couldn't compete in price/performance with new coming and more
'industry standard' platforms (80386/486, OS/2 - Nokia has always relied
on Intel+Microsoft).

So further development of MPS 10 was stopped, current customers were just
supported. This happened c. 1986-87.

But the Ada game at Nokia wasn't over yet. At Nokia there were quite many
engineers, who were used to Ada. But most of all, there was a strong
management support to get Ada as development tool also into DOS and OS/2.
According to our experiences the "sound software engineering principles"
had played very well in Ada. I think this goal was seen strategic in
getting efficiency and quality improvements in internal development.

For DOS Alsys' Ada was taken into use. One major customer project was
implemented in Ada into DOS. It was into Norway 'Vinmonopolet' (Norway
state's liqueur monopoly shop) back office system. The application area
is POS (Point Of Sales), which is one of Nokia's areas (besides bank
systems).

For OS/2 there was no Ada compiler, but it was ordered from Alsys. One of
the basic ideas was that 80286/386/486 and OS/2 would eventually replace
MPS 10, but MPS 10's useful Ada code could be reused. At that time it
was thought that OS/2 is the way to go, and in PCs the future graphical
operating system would be Program Manager (at least in the operational
systems of the big corporations, which were Nokia's main target).

Alsys delivered the compiler. Some projects were started with it. Rather
intensive experiments were made to find out the ways how we could call
other language code from Ada (yes), call Ada from other language code (no),
use Ada for Windows programming (no - not felt to be important either at
that time), use Ada for Presentation Manager programming (no), etc. The
Microsoft platform with its switches and 'hackings' just turned out to be
so 'C-minded' and too unfriendly to Ada. In many cases, based on technical
usability ratings (especially when doing systems programming), the choice
was not free between Ada and C, if your intention was to develop something
to run smoothly in this environment.

One special battle was played in the POS group at the end of 80s. The
question was should the new OS/2 based POS generation be developed in
Ada or in C++. Ada lost. One technical reason was that Ada couldn't be used
for OS/2 PM programming. But even if Ada had passed that and all the
other technical "musts", I think, in this case, Ada might have lost the
selection anyway. 

The explanation is 'psychological'. Nokia was (and is) a big company. Not
everybody were involved nor committed to the previous big MPS 10 Ada effort.
It had had quite a lot of difficulties, and those difficulties had been
poured on Ada (perhaps much unfairly). The 'Ada-hype' of the early 80s had 
broken with its counter effects. It was true (and is still) that the Ada
compilations were slower and more resource consuming than C compilations.
(Today, I think, this is no more a big deal.)

Anyway at least two major Ada projects were completed in OS/2 whose
results were available in Nokia's PC/LAN product offering. New version of
the first system has already been re-implemented in C. The second system
is still there but its upgrade version will most likely to be in C++.

So, summa summarum, Nokia tried to take Ada into widespread use also in
MS-DOS and OS/2 environments. Unfortunately that didn't succeed. Those who
previously wrote Ada into MPS 10, write now C or C++ into Windows, OS/2,
or NT.



Olavi Poutanen
Testwell Oy
Kanslerinkatu 8
SF-33720 Tampere
Finland
Tel. +358-31-316 5464
Fax. +358-31-183 311
E-mail. olavip@cs.tut.fi

---------

Some final comments: what are these companies? When mentioning 'Nokia' I
actually mean some of the below listed companies.

When the MPS 10 project started the company name was Nokia Information
Systems, which was the computer branch of the Nokia Corporation.

Softplan was a software house, subsidiary to Nokia Information Systems. In
the mid of 80s Softplan had an active Ada marketing campaign (do you still
have Softplan's beautiful Ada poster?). Softplan was merged to its mother
in 1987.

In 1988 Nokia purchased Ericsson Information Systems, the computer
business of the Swedish Ericsson Corporation. The resultant company was
named to Nokia Data.

In 1991 ICL Plc from UK (80% Fujitsu/Japan owned) purchased Nokia Data.
The resultant company name is ICL Data (the sales company in Finland) and
ICL Personal Systems (the product development company, PC manufacturing
and mostly PC/LAN based systems software development). The remaining Nokia
is still a major electronic company and a world-class player with its 
Nokia Mobile Phones, Nokia Telecommunications, etc. companies. Thanks to
the succesful acquisition of Nokia Data ICL has increased its market share
as PC vendor remarkably in Europe, and the trend seems to be increasing.

TESTWELL is a MBO spin-off from ICL Personal Systems (1992). Testwell's
business is testing tools for Ada, C and C++. For Ada we have TBGEN System
(Test Bed Generator For Ada, a novel test harnessing tool facilitating a 
superior specification-based module testing environment on your Ada 
packages) and TCMON System (Test Coverage Monitor / Program Bottleneck 
Finder For Ada, an industry-strength instrumentation-based dynamic analysis
tool for your Ada code). These tools were initially developed along with
the Nokia MPS 10 work. Being written in Ada they have been ported to many
environments (PC, VAX, Sun-3, Sun-4, Rational, Apollo, and more).

If interested to hear more of these tools (more detailed descriptions,
references to evaluation reports, distributors, references,...), please
contact me.

Testwell Oy
Olavi Poutanen