| ICS EXPANDS SCL TRAINING
SERVICES
Melbourne, FL, February 21, 1996 -- As part of an overall expansion this year, Interface & Control Systems, Inc. (ICS) has developed a comprehensive set of training courses aimed at educating customers in the use of Spacecraft Command Language (SCL) and the integrated development environment surrounding this fifth-generation language. Training is available at both the Melbourne, FL and Columbia, MD facilities, as well as on-site training at customer locations. Training courses were developed in response to the overwhelming acceptance of SCL as an industry standard in command and control of systems using expert system technologies. The SCL system uses a core set of software built around a rule-based expert system. In addition, the SCL system employs a high level scripting language to provide a temporal reasoning capability. The SCL system is composed of several processes and employs several third party products to give the system a flexibility and state-of-the-art capability. Two basic levels of training are currently available with several specialized classes being developed for release later this year. New users will benefit from the Introduction to SCL training course. This introductory course is geared toward operational staff members and designed to give students experience in the overall operation of the SCL system. The class includes an overview of the architecture and infrastructure of SCL. It provides hands-on, task-oriented projects, useful tips, and technical information to get students started using SCL. This class is designed to take students from elementary tasks, such as loading and configuring the system, to more complex techniques, such as basic programming in SCL, creating a database, and developing SCL scripts and rules. Prerequisites are: a working knowledge of the UNIX operating system and the "vi" editor. Familiarity with expert system concepts are also desirable. The Advanced SCL Concepts course is geared toward software development team members and designed to provide students with advanced SCL programming language techniques, database management system structure, and rule based expert system development concepts. Students learn through the use of hands-on, task-oriented projects, the user-oriented, integrated environment for development, simulation, and test of a control system. Strategic exercises include use of the API, message broker, and development of client/server applications. Prerequisites include Introduction to SCL or equivalent working knowledge of the SCL environment. C or C++ programming experience is necessary. ICS is committed to providing the highest quality training available to better serve their customers, said Ron Du Bois, senior training consultant and recent addition to the ICS staff. The potential applications of the SCL system in virtually unlimited. Uses of the SCL system span the spectrum from spacecraft and ground stations to simulations and industrial monitor and control. SCL is mature and has been on the market for several years and it has finally gained industry acceptance. They brought me on in an effort to reduce customer costs by getting them up and running SCL in a very short period of time. We are in the process of developing an entire set of specialized training courses to better fit customer requirements, said Brian Buckley, vice-president of marketing for ICS. We have found through our experience that training our customers on how to use SCL is very cost-effective from their point of view. In fact, our entire training/consulting philosophy has been guided by customer input. Additional press releases will accompany specialized training courses as they are developed throughout the remainder of this year. Contact information:
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