Ada Resource Association

Members of the SPARK team from Altran UK will be attending the Ada-Europe 2014 conference to exhibit, present information about the SPARK technology, and provide a full-day tutorial about the SPARK language. They will be featuring the recently released next generation of the SPARK toolset which includes support for the latest version of the language, SPARK 2014.

On Friday 27th June, Altran UK will be presenting one of the tutorial sessions in collaboration with our partners, AdaCore: Introduction to Verification with SPARK 2014. This tutorial will provide a broad overview of the SPARK 2014 language as well as an introduction to one of the most novel features of the language – the dual nature of the contracts as both executable and mathematical statements and how these can be verified by testing, proof, or a combination of the two. In the afternoon, the tutorial will look at the more advanced features of the language and toolset that are essential for industrial-scale specification. The tutorial will include hands-on exercises using the SPARK toolset.

Australian healthcare informatics company SmartWard Pty Ltd has adopted AdaCore’s GNAT Pro Ada Development Environment and CodePeer static analysis tool to implement their patient care management system. This system needs to be highly reliable and secure from unauthorized users while providing real-time response in an easy to use format. AdaCore’s tools were determined to be the best solution for meeting these requirements.

AdaCore has a long history of providing Ada-based software development tools for a wide range of safety-critical systems, and now provides a competitive advantage for medical applications such as SmartWard where the concept of a ‘fatal error’ may be literally true.

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, May 12, 2014. Ada-Europe today announced the publication in extra formats of the 2012 version of the Ada programming language standard, after its formal approval by ISO/IEC JTC 1 in December 2012.

Since its standardization, the Ada 2012 standard has been available in HTML and Adobe Acrobat format (PDF), from the download sites [1] and [2]. More recently, the latest Ada language definition became also available as volume 8339 of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science series [3], as a companion to the Ada 2012 Rationale, published by Springer as LNCS 8338.

Moreover, with a view to exploring new media platforms to further widen the availability of this important material, Ada-Europe has now produced a prototype eBook of the Ada 2012 Reference Manual, which can be downloaded from [1]. This eBook should be regarded as a draft concept, proposed for the scrutiny of the Ada community at large, for feedback on its perceived usefulness and suggestions for improvements. Returns on this subject should be addressed to Ada-Europe at board@ada-europe.org.

[1] http://www.ada-europe.org/resources/online
[2] http://www.adaic.org/ada-resources/standards/ada12
[3] http://www.springer.com/computer/swe/book/978-3-642-45418-9

AdaCore today announced the release of its latest Ada cross-development environment, GNAT Pro 7.2, for ARM Cortex processors running Android. This GNAT Pro product, hosted on Windows and Linux, comprises a complete Ada toolsuite for developing and maintaining Android applications using a mixture of Ada and Java. Developers can now exploit the software engineering benefits of the Ada language, while also taking advantage of the Java libraries and services provided by the Android platform. Applications can also be written solely in Ada, or in a combination of Ada and other “native” languages. Android 2.3 and later versions are supported, on Cortex A8 and above.

AdaCore today announced a new target platform for the latest version of its GNAT Pro Safety-Critical Ada Development Environment. Hosted on Windows workstations, GNAT Pro Safety-Critical V7.2 is now targeted to the LynuxWorks LynxOS-178 V2.2.2 RTOS for PowerPC, and supports both ARINC-653 APEX partitions and POSIX pthreads. GNAT Pro Safety-Critical includes the standard GNAT Pro components – the GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) and GNATbench IDEs and accompanying toolset – along with specialized tools and run-time libraries oriented towards applications that have to meet demanding software safety standards, such as DO-178B or DO-178C for avionics. With GNAT Pro Safety-Critical for LynxOS-178, developers who need to deliver high-assurance applications on this LynuxWorks RTOS now have an integrated and full-functioned toolsuite that implements all versions of the Ada language, including Ada 2012, and is backed by AdaCore’s expert support.

This GNAT Pro ARM product provides a complete Ada development environment oriented towards embedded systems that require the flexibility and extensive services provided by Linux. Developers of such systems can now exploit the software engineering benefits of the Ada language, including reliability, maintainability, and portability.