Ada Resource Association

After five years, RTCA and EUROCAE, the U.S. and European avionics standards organizations, are nearing the finish line in updating DO-178B, the bible for developers of safety-critical software. A cast of 1,000-plus people have observed or participated in the process and about 100 people show up at every meeting, according to one member of RTCA Special Committee 205 (SC-205). The industry expects the final package — DO-178C — to be released in the first quarter of 2011 and be mandated six to nine months after ratification.

Unit Test has been around almost as long as software development itself. It just makes sense to take each application building block, build it in isolation, and execute it with test data to make sure that it does just what it should do without any confusing input from the remainder of the application. In the past, the sting came from not being able to simply lift a software unit from its development environment, compile and run it let alone supply it with test data.

LDRA has released a security-critical development and certification solution to ensure the company’s tool suite meets the growing demand for security-critical software.

Joab Jackson takes a look at the history of the Ada programming language, it’s traditional markets, and gives a real picture of Ada’s place in today’s software development world.

The choice of programming languages is one of the most critical decisions in any programming project. And there’s no shortage of choices. In the 60-year history of computer programming, hundreds of different languages have been designed and used for various purposes.