Meridian Open Ada

Budget version of an Ada compiler for DOS shipped in 1990 by Meridian Systems under the name AdaZ but the name was changed to "Open Ada" after complaints from The Analytic Sciences Corporation who shipped an Ada PDL tool under the name "Ada_Z", and early marketing material and beta versions of the package referred to it name as Reach.

Its main claim to fame was that it contained an actual optimising Ada compiler and debugger with mostly complete library for only USD 149, even though it was not validated it was built on an older validated compiler and source compatible with the validated Meridian Ada, opening up the possibility of developing on Open Ada and later compiling on a validated compiler. It also featured an excellent if somewhat incomplete DOS interface library and most libraries actually came with source.

To cut corners and to supply a simple integrated IDE that was more like what amateur PC developers were used to the company licensed a copy of BlackBeard but renamed it ACE and removed any references to the original BlackBeard name form the product, this gave them a front end that had a rather nifty hypertext help system, the usual syntax highlighting for keywords and options, and a menu system for keywords, but otherwise felt a little backwards next to contemporaries Borland Pascal and TopSpeed Modula-2. The toolkit also had support for interfacing with Microsoft C and MASM via a pragma mechanism, both as pre-processing and inline.

While there was initially great interest in the product when it was first introduced as it represented an unprecedented value for an Ada compiler, but the average price of such put it squarely out of reach for hobby programmers and the merely curious. However it appears the company made something a faux pas shortly after introduction when it announced the price would remain at 149 USD for educational users but they would from 1991 charge private entities 495 for the product. The company also placed licensing restrictions on the product, the most problematic one was the outright ban on the use of the compiler except on a single PC regardless of the amount of licenses bought, while educational institutions routinely gave students only access to diskless DOS workstations.

This killed pretty much all the interest in the product but not only was it dangerously close in price to full products from other vendors for private users, but as far as the educational market went Alsys was by that time offering an Ada implementation called FirstAda for DOS that had a 286 back end that retailed for USD 144.99 as an educational product and was in almost every way superior to the Meridian offering and they had by 1992 lowered the price to 129 with a DOS extender, 99 USD without an extender, and 225 USD for a protected mode 386 version while R&R Software had a product similar to Open Ada called 80X'86 DOS that retailed for USD 99 without an need for an educational license altogether.

Versions

 * Last known version: Meridian Open Ada 4.1 (1996)
 * Note that it appears that the initial Open Ada release was not a version 1 release, but synchronised the version number with other Ada/DOS tools from the company.

Publications

 * Jean-Etienne Rombaldi: Algorithmique numérique et Ada - 1993 - Collection Logique, Mathématiques et Informatique. Masson - Uses Open Ada

License & availability

 * Discontinued commercial software, Initial price USD 149, in 1991 hiked up to 495 for the general public and 149 for students.

Publisher

 * Meridian Systems