1. SIGAda APIWG Birds of a Feather Session SIGAda 2005 November 16, 2005 Geoff Smith, APIWG Chair

2. State of APIWG Today  Just formally approved  Prototype web site

3. Where to go from here  What APIs are of immediate interest?  APIs under active development  Purpose of web site & mailing list  List everything?  … Or just APIs of interest? (No need to duplicate other sites)

4. Quick Survey of Ada Sites  Ada World  Appears to be relatively current  Seems a little vendor-centric  ARA (adaic.org)  Rich source of info, some pointers to libraries  Ada Power  Only a year out of date  Ada Home  Hopelessly out of date?

5. What Can APIWG Add?  Many sites already list APIs/Bindings  But little to no “ value add ”  Reviews (technical, usability, etc.)  What APIs are actually maintained  Encouragement

6. Proposal  Direct attention on APIs of active interest  Encourage “ private ” registration  Many venues available for managing code  Create a list of “ top 5 ” projects, based on genuine interest  Testing, completeness, usability, etc.  Encourage contributions for these (assuming APIs are open source, and owners are willing)  Highlight as potential projects for students – senior projects or capstones

7. SIGAda APIWG Consensus from BoF Session November 16, 2005

8. API Suggestions  Command Line Parsing and Verification (options/switches)  Regular Expressions  XML* (XML-Ada by AdaCore?)  Containers*  Also “ SPARK ” /FormalMethods specific  Note that Ada 2005 uses Ada 2005 features  Martin Dowie - package for Ada 95 (with limitations) – URL is http://www.martin.dowie.btinternet.co.uk/  Picture Libraries (JPEG, TIFF, etc.)  X11 Libraries  AWS (Ada Web Server)  Interface.xxx (C#, Java)  OpenGL (ref. SIGAda 2004 paper)  GUIs (e.g. gtkAda, tk/Tcl)  Maybe there are existing tools or workarounds …

9. Top Suggestions  Containers  Like Ada.Containers, but for Ada 95  Maybe Directories, too  XML  Subject of last year ’ s APIWG BoF  XMLADA?  Improve/update existing packages/APIs  License issues need to be discussed

10. Onward …  Discussions will continue on APIWG mail list Sigada-APIWG@listserv.acm.org http://www.acm.org/sigada/wg/apiwg