Ada Resource Association

With the geometric growth in software size and complexity, avionics manufacturers are losing control of project schedules and budgets. Consequently, the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) hopes to address software development challenges through DO-178C – a new standard that embraces contemporary technologies and methodologies necessary to achieve these aims.

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.

A thread on the SoftTalk blog discusses Ada and multicore programming along with other Ada topics in the comments section.

Zero Defect Software Development (ZDSD) is a results-oriented process that emphasizes the analysis, testing and reporting of the causality of defects. This process, which has evolved from the commitment to providing “five-nines” (99.999%) reliability for mission-critical applications, supplants the traditional approach of reacting to undesirable effects and treating symptoms while attempting to manage verification processes using “trend analyses” or simply tracking the occurrences of defects.