Ada Resource Association

AdaCore today announced the availability of its GNAT Pro Safety-Critical product for ARM Cortex micro-controllers. This bareboard GNAT Pro Safety-Critical product provides a complete Ada development environment, oriented towards systems that are safety-critical or have stringent memory constraints. Developers of such systems can now exploit the software engineering benefits of the Ada language, including reliability, maintainability, and portability.

Calling all fellow software engineers (Ada geeks)! On this Valentine’s Day, AdaCore invites you to open your hearts and help share the passion for all things Ada! As so many developers know, relationships with programming languages can be a lot like romances: First there are wild infatuations and brief honeymoons filled with eager expectations. Then come realities, incompatibilities, even loveless cohabitation. So, what’s next? A remorseful search for a new relationship, or reconciliation and renewed passion? Thanks to the new ISO-approved Ada 2012 standard, our ardor for Ada is now stronger than ever! Come join the conversation: Let us know why and how you use Ada, and what you love about it. Visit www.ada2012.org/passion.html and share your own ‘passion’ for Ada! Also, check us out on facebook at facebook.com/adapassion.

Language revision adds contract-based programming, multicore support, and other advanced features

GENEVA, Switzerland, December 18, 2012 – The Ada Resource Association (ARA) and Ada-Europe today announced the approval and publication of the latest version of the Ada programming language by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The language revision, known as Ada 2012, was under the auspices of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG9 and was conducted by the Ada Rapporteur Group (ARG) subunit of WG9, with sponsorship in part from the ARA and Ada-Europe. The formal approval of the standard was issued on November 20 by ISO/IEC JTC 1, and the standard was published on December 15.

Read the full release.

A new GNAT Pro feature allows Ada developers to portably and reliably define data layout in an endianness-independent fashion. This capability makes it possible to port and reuse existing code bases on a different hardware platform, without having to manually implement the error-prone, byte-swapping logic that would otherwise be needed.

Rockwell Collins has successfully used AdaCore’s Code Traceability Analysis for DO-178B in the certification of the Integrated Display System (IDS) for a large, next-generation, commercial aircraft. The Traceability Analysis package is part of the evidence needed to satisfy the DO-178B objectives for structural code coverage at Level A, the highest (most stringent) level for avionics software safety.

The SPARK Pro 11 software development and verification environment has been released, providing a major step forward for the developers of high-assurance systems. SPARK Pro 11 offers many enhancements particularly in the area of program proof.

GNATProve is used for formal verification of Ada programs and is being developed as part of the Hi-Lite project. It can prove that subprograms respect their contracts, expressed as preconditions and postconditions in the syntax of Ada 2012. The tool automatically discovers the subset of subprograms which can be formally analyzed. We provide binary distributions for x86 linux, x86 windows and x86-64 bit linux. More details can be found at http://www.open-do.org/projects/hi-lite/gnatprove/

AdaCore today announced the successful usage of its SPARK Pro and GNAT Pro High-Security products by Rockwell Collins in the development of the SecureOne™ Guard, a high assurance cross domain guard for military tactical systems. The SecureOne Guard has strict requirements for reliability and security. In order to meet these needs, Rockwell Collins selected SPARK Pro and GNAT Pro High-Security as key development tools for the project.

Website dedicated to all things Ada 2012 now up and running!

OAKTON, Va., September 18, 2012 – The Ada Resource Association (ARA) today announced the completion of a dedicated Ada 2012 website designed to be the “destination” for all things Ada 2012. The site includes a variety of short, 3- to 5-minute films of high-level Ada experts talking about the new features of the latest version of Ada, and providing historical context. In addition, the site hosts a variety of learning materials, including tutorials, webinars, white papers, and links to software downloads. In the coming months, the site will also provide a collection of short, candid video interviews with programmers talking about what they love about Ada, as well as a means for site visitors to ‘join the conversation.’

“We created the Ada 2012 microsite to not only provide a visually provocative way to educate people about all the new features of this remarkable language, but also to demonstrate the passion of Ada users worldwide,” said Ben Brosgol, ARA President. “Special thanks go out to Gary Matoso of Vignette Creative for his exceptional site design work and video editing, to all the ARA and ARG members who provided input for the site, and especially to the die-hard Ada devotees for their continued love and support of the Ada language. In a world where our lives depend on software more and more every day, Ada is more relevant than ever.”

About Ada 2012
Ada 2012 is the latest in a series of Ada language revisions under the auspices of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG9 and was conducted by the Ada Rapporteur Group (ARG) subunit of WG9, with sponsorship in part from the ARA and Ada-Europe. Ada 2012 brings significant enhancements to Ada, most notably in the area of “contract-based programming.” Other new features in Ada 2012 include enhancements to the containers library, additional expressiveness through features, such as conditional expressions and more powerful iterators, and support for multicore platforms (task affinities, and the extension of the Ravenscar profile – standardized in Ada 2005 as an efficient and predictable tasking subset for high-integrity real-time systems – to multiprocessor and multicore environments). Combined, these new features establish the Ada programming language as the benchmark for developers requiring the highest levels of reliability, safety, and security. For more information about Ada 2012 visit www.ada2012.org.

About the Ada Resource Association
The Ada Resource Association (ARA) is a non-profit organization chartered to support the continued evolution of the Ada language and its infrastructure, to serve as a source of information about Ada and its usage, and to promote Ada as a language for effective software engineering. To these ends the ARA maintains the Ada Information Clearinghouse website www.adaic.org and has provided funding for the development and maintenance of the Ada language standard and the Ada Conformance Assessment Test Suite. For information about the ARA, including sponsorship opportunities, please visit www.adaresource.com. The ARA is headquartered in Oakton, VA (US).

Organization Contact

Ada Resource Association
    Ben Brosgol, ARA President

    brosgol@adacore.com

Ada Resource Association
    Jessie Glockner
    Rainier Communications
    Tel: +1-508-475-0025 x140
    jglockner@rainierco.com
    http://twitter.com/JessieGlockner

Ada-Europe announced that the winners of the first “Ada Way” programming contest were Ricardo Aguirre Reyes, Andrea Graziano, Marco Teoli, and Alberto Zuccato.

In addition, Ada-Europe announced a follow-on challenge named “Try and Beat Me”. Student teams are invited to submit versions of the programming challenge that improve upon the original winning submission.

For more information, see the challenge’s website: http://www.ada-europe.org/AdaWay