NEW YORK and PARIS, August 24, 2010 – AdaCore, a leading supplier of Ada development tools and support services, today announced the launch of Ada Web Server (AWS) for Wind River’s VxWorks Real-Time Operating System (RTOS). When used in conjunction with the GNAT Pro development environment, AWS enables developers to embed an Ada-based web server within any application, accessible through web browsers. With AWS for VxWorks, users can connect through a direct TCP/IP link to board-level applications for a variety of purposes, such as system control, configuration, and/or maintenance. The two-way interface is both lightweight and flexible.

In the past, AWS has been available on native operating systems, including Windows and Linux. VxWorks is the first RTOS supported by AWS, providing developers with a target-independent solution for creating user interfaces for embedded applications. Ports to additional embedded RTOS platforms are currently under development.

“Embedded applications used to be fairly self-contained and autonomous. This picture is changing rapidly, and a growing number now have a connection to the Internet or at least to a company’s intranet,” said Cyrille Comar, Managing Director, AdaCore. “AWS for VxWorks provides GNAT Pro customers with a very simple and integrated way to implement a user interface to their embedded devices through regular web browsers, bringing the power of modern web technology to the traditional embedded world.”

“Wind River is pleased to see AWS support made available for the VxWorks platform,” said Chip Downing, senior director of aerospace and defense at Wind River. “AdaCore continues to add advanced capabilities for VxWorks that expand the use cases for both products.”

Key features of AWS:

• Web Parameters Module for retrieving forms or URL parameters and building an associative table for easy access
• Session Server that keeps client data from page to page
• SOAP support for developing web services and generating stubs/skeletons from a WSDL document
• Template parser, allowing the complete separation of web design from code
• HTTPS/SSL, for Secure Sockets based on the OpenSSL library
• Support for large servers and virtual hosting using dispatchers based on URI request methods or host names
• Server Push support
• Log Module to keep log file of all resources requested by servers
• Support for SOAP, SMTP, POP and LDAP protocols and the AJAX standard
• Client-side support using client API to retrieve any web page from a web page
• High-level services, including directory browser, status page for information, and web page service to build simple static page servers

About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, the state-of-the-art programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where safety, security, and reliability are critical. AdaCore’s flagship product is the GNAT Pro development environment, which comes with expert on-line support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has an extensive world-wide customer base; see www.adacore.com/home/company/customers/ for further information.

Ada and GNAT Pro see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified applications, including commercial aircraft avionics, military systems, air traffic management/control, railway systems and medical devices, and in security-sensitive domains such as financial services.

AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com

NEW YORK, PARIS, and BATH, England, August 16, 2010 – Crypto 2010 Conference

Altran Praxis and AdaCore today announced a new reference implementation of the Skein algorithm, written and verified using the GPL 2010 Edition of the SPARK language and toolset. Skein is a cryptographic hash function and an entrant in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) hash function competition to design what will become the new Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-3) standard. Such hash functions are used to compute short “digests” of long messages, and are one of the key building blocks of digital communication and cryptographic systems. Altran Praxis and AdaCore have open sourced the SPARKSkein reference implementation and made it available to the developer community via the Skein website. This is in time for the second SHA-3 candidate conference taking place at the Crypto 2010 conference, Santa Barbara, California, USA, from 23-24 August 2010.

The joint Altran Praxis and AdaCore project began as an informal experiment to demonstrate whether a hash algorithm like Skein could be realistically implemented in SPARK. The goals of the implementation were:

• Readability – to strike a reasonable balance of readability and performance.


• Portability – the team aimed for a single code-base that was portable and correct on all target machines of any word size and endian-ness, with no macros, ‘ifdefs’, or pre-processing of any kind.


• Performance – to ensure that the performance of the SPARK code would be close to or better than the existing C reference implementation.


• Formality – to prove at least type-safety (i.e., no exceptions) on the SPARKSkein code. The team wanted to use the experiment to refute the claim that ‘formal is slow’ in programming languages.

The project concluded with notable success, proving that an algorithm like Skein can be written in a ‘formal’ language like SPARK without sacrificing readability or performance. Furthermore, portability was achieved. A single set of sources yielded identical results on more than fifteen platforms, covering a wide range of microprocessors and operating systems. In addition, SPARK’s type-safe nature allowed the project team to maximize compiler optimization with confidence.

Professor Stefan Lucks, a member of the Skein design team, said, “Speaking for the Skein design team, we’re very impressed by this work. SPARKSkein isn’t just another implementation of Skein – essential properties of this implementation have been formally verified. It is stunning how the formal verification of the SPARK source code actually made us discover a flaw in our own reference C implementation. Personally, I also find the SPARK code to be more readable than the equivalent C.”

Rod Chapman, a Principal Engineer at Altran Praxis, led the SPARKSkein project. He said, “This is an incredibly exciting project for us to be involved in. By open sourcing the code and donating our work, we hope to make a valuable contribution to the scientific community, as well as to showcase the capability of SPARK and its verification tools.”

“ Eric Botcazou, GCC expert and consultant at AdaCore provided the optimization and performance analysis for the project. He added, “The results clearly demonstrate that the SPARKSkein code is easy to understand and read, while the performance is at a comparable speed to the C code. This is solid evidence that any ‘formal’ code developed in this way doesn’t have to be slow and impractical.”

About Altran Praxis
Altran Praxis is a specialist systems and software house, focused on the engineering of systems with demanding safety, security or innovation requirements. Altran Praxis leads the world in specific areas of advanced systems engineering and innovation such as: ultra low defect software engineering, Human Machine Interface (HMI), safety engineering for complex or novel systems and tools/methods (such as SPARK) for systems engineering. It offers clients a range of services including turnkey systems development, consultancy, training and R&D. Key market sectors are aerospace and defence, rail, nuclear, air traffic management, automotive, medical and security.

The company operates globally with active projects in the US, Asia and Europe. The headquarters of Altran Praxis are in Bath (UK) with offices in Sophia Antipolis, London, Paris, Loughborough and Bangalore. Altran Praxis is an expertise centre within, and wholly owned by, Altran which is a global leader in innovation engineering and employs 17,000 staff across the world. www.altran-praxis.com

About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, the state-of-the-art programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where safety, security, and reliability are critical. AdaCore’s flagship product is the GNAT Pro development environment, which comes with expert on-line support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has an extensive world-wide customer base; see www.adacore.com/home/company/customers/ for further information.

Ada and GNAT Pro see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified applications, including commercial aircraft avionics, military systems, air traffic management/control, railway systems and medical devices, and in security-sensitive domains such as financial services.

AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com

Press Contacts

Jamie Ayre
AdaCore
press@adacore.com

Jessie Glockner
Rainier Communications (for AdaCore)
adacore@rainierco.com
Tel: +1 508 475 0025 x140

Leena Chauhan
Altran Praxis
press@altran-praxis.com
Tel: +44 (0) 203 1170884

Gerry Grewal/Sara Collinge
Speed
altran-praxis@speedcommunications.com
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7842 3200

PARIS, BATH and NEW YORK, July 27th, 2010 – The company secunet Security Networks AG, one of Germany’s largest IT security providers, announced today that it has adopted the SPARK Pro development environment. SPARK Pro, a Freely Licensed Open Source Software (FLOSS) product created by AdaCore and Altran Praxis, will be used by secunet as a strategic technology to build highly robust security-critical applications.

The first secunet project to apply SPARK Pro will be the Multilevel Workstation, an interactive system for concurrently handling information of different security domains. To maintain confidentiality and integrity of all processed data, Multiple Independent Levels of Security (MILS) are enforced on a single hardware platform.

SPARK Pro was chosen by secunet because it was the only mature and commercially supported environment suiting the requirements for developing security-critical applications for secunet’s multi-level products. Moreover, SPARK Pro’s formal verification techniques provide the foundation necessary for achieving stringent high-robustness certifications of secunet’s multi-level systems.

SPARK Pro was launched in 2009 by Altran Praxis, an international specialist in embedded and critical systems engineering, and AdaCore, the leading provider of commercial software solutions for the Ada language. SPARK Pro provides the foremost language, toolset and design discipline for engineering high-assurance software. It combines Altran Praxis’ renowned SPARK language and verification tools with the GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) and GNATbench development environments by AdaCore.

SPARK Pro provides increased support for security assurance, including the ability to mix software of different security levels (such as classified and unclassified) within the same system. This MILS functionality meets an increasing trend in the security and defense industries to combine multiple secure and non-secure elements into a single partitioned system to deliver smaller, more integrated solutions.

“For the security-critical parts of our workstation we needed a formal verification technique that was as mature as manageable in a large-scale project,” said Alexander Senier, project manager of secunet’s Multilevel Workstation. “SPARK Pro was the only solution that met our requirements, combining trustworthy development tools with excellent support provided directly by the experts. As a strategically important technology SPARK Pro enables us to further enhance the security, certifiability and flexibility of our future high-security solutions.”

Founded in 1997, secunet is one of Germany’s leading providers of superior IT security. Working with its customers – enterprises, public authorities and international organizations – secunet develops and implements high-performance products and state-of-the-art IT security solutions. At secunet, more than 270 experts focus on issues such as cryptography (SINA), e-government, business and automotive security.

“There is an increasing need for writing complex software that meets the highest standards of security. To fully answer this emerging requirement, one needs a state-of-the-art development environment that provides a way to formally verify security properties of the code,” said Cyrille Comar, Managing Director, AdaCore. “AdaCore and Altran Praxis have combined the best of their technology and expertise to answer this need through the product SPARK Pro. We are very pleased to see customers with such demanding requirements as secunet adopting it.”

“The ability to meet multiple levels of certification within the same application is increasingly critical to the successful deployment of complex projects,” said Keith Williams, Altran Praxis Managing Director. “As secunet is demonstrating, SPARK Pro provides the perfect solution for those developing advanced high-security software across the globe. We are delighted to be helping secunet with the development of this important new product line.”

Designed by Altran Praxis, SPARK is a language specifically designed to support the development of software used in applications where correct operation is vital for reasons of safety, security, or both. The SPARK toolset offers static verification that is unrivalled in terms of its soundness, low false-alarm rate, depth and efficiency. The toolset also generates evidence for correctness that can be used to build a constructive assurance case in line with the requirements of industry regulators and certification schemes. There are versions of SPARK based on Ada 83, Ada 95, and Ada 2005, so all standard Ada compilers and tools work out-of-the-box with SPARK.

Press Contacts
press@adacore.com

Leena Chauhan
Altran Praxis
leena.chauhan@altran-praxis.com

PARIS and NEW YORK, May 4, 2010 – AdaCore, together with Altran Praxis, CEA LIST, Astrium Space Transportation, INRIA ProVal and Thales Communications today announced the start of the Hi-Lite project. Financially supported by French national and local government agencies, Hi-Lite is an Open Source project designed to increase the use of formal methods in developing high integrity software, particularly to meet the forthcoming DO-178C avionics standard. It will achieve this by building tools that are simpler, more powerful and easier to use.

Hi-Lite will bring together the strengths of the project partners to create formal verification tools for both the Ada and C languages. These will enable code verification at a deeper level than current solutions and reduce the need for time-consuming and costly physical testing of high integrity software solutions. The €3.9 million ($5.3 million) project is scheduled to last three years.

The project builds on the existing ten year experience of Airbus in using formal verification methods to create high integrity systems, and is strongly driven by the criteria that Airbus’s work has generated: soundness, applicability to the code, usability by “normal” engineers on “normal” computers, improvement on classical methods, and certifiability.

The project is structured as two different tool chains for Ada and C. AdaCore will lead the project and contribute its expertise in the Ada language, including the GNAT compiler and CodePeer static analyser, with Altran Praxis providing its Ada-based SPARK verification toolset. The C toolchain will use the GCC compiler and CEA’s Frama-C platform. Both toolchains will be integrated within AdaCore’s IDEs.

Astrium Space Transportation will demonstrate the method and tools by deploying them on a major project to redevelop the software systems of its Automated Transfer Vehicle, aiming to prove the advantages of formal verification. Thales Communications will also use the project tools across its component-based middleware solution, adding the ability to automate the verification of generated code by using Hi-Lite annotation language.

By defining a common language of annotation for testing, static analysis and formal proofs, Hi-Lite will allow industries to switch gradually from an all testing policy to a faster and more cost-effective use of verification methods. It loosely integrates formal proofs with testing and static analysis, thus allowing projects to combine different techniques around a common expression of properties and constraints.

The Hi-Lite project is primarily driven by the planned Formal Methods Technology Supplement of the DO-178C avionics standard. For the first time, this allows formal verification tools to replace physical testing when applying for system certification. As well as aerospace and defense, the products created through Hi-Lite aim to make formal verification available and easier to use across more industries, such as medical and automotive.

For more information and regular updates on the Hi-Lite project visit http://www.open-do.org/projects/hi-lite

Quotes from the Hi-Lite project partners

“As high integrity systems get larger and more complex, formal methods provide a cost-effective solution that decreases the need for testing and speeds up project completion,” said Arnaud Charlet, Hi-Lite Project Leader of AdaCore. “Working with the Hi-Lite project partners, we aim to make formal verification faster and easier to use across large, multi-language projects that need to meet certification criteria, such as the forthcoming DO-178C standard.”

“Altran Praxis are delighted to be involved in Hi-Lite. We look forward to the project bringing the advantages of formal verification and the SPARK approach to a wider audience in the software development community,” said Keith Williams, Altran Praxis Managing Director.

“CEA-LIST will provide its expertise on the Frama-C platform for the formal proof of C-based software. We will work on connecting the Ada and C parts of the specifications and proofs,” said Loïc Correnson, leader of the Frama-C team at CEA-LIST. “Indeed, as a co-author of the ACSL specification language, we will participate in the elaboration of the specification language(s) in the project.”

“The ProVal Team at the INRIA Saclay research center is pleased to be a member of the Hi-Lite project,” said Claude Marché, Senior Research Scientist at INRIA. “We will provide expertise in automated reasoning and needed improvements in the Why/Alt-Ergo deductive verification tool-chain.”

About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, a state-of-the-art programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where safety, security, and reliability are critical. AdaCore’s flagship product is the GNAT Pro development environment, which comes with expert on-line support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has an extensive world-wide customer base; see http://www.adacore.com/home/company/customers/ for further information.

Ada and GNAT Pro see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified applications, including commercial aircraft avionics, military systems, air traffic management/control, railroad systems, and medical devices, and in security-sensitive domains such as financial services.

AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com

NEW YORK and SAN JOSE, Calif. – April 27, 2010 – Embedded Systems Conference – AdaCore, a leading supplier of Ada development tools and support services, today announced the selection of SPARK Pro by Rockwell Collins for use on selected projects that have stringent security and information assurance requirements. Rockwell Collins chose SPARK Pro for several reasons, including:

• previous SPARK development experience where the use of SPARK clearly reduced defects, shortened integration time, and aided certification,
• integrated SPARK toolset support provided in the GNATbench and GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) Interactive Development Environments (IDEs),
• SPARK support access using AdaCore’s “GNAT Tracker” system, including direct access to the SPARK developers and experts at Altran Praxis, and
• AdaCore’s customer friendly license and support subscription model.

SPARK Pro comprises the proven SPARK language toolset developed by Altran Praxis integrated into AdaCore’s GNAT Pro Ada development environment. The SPARK language supports the correctness-by-construction methodology (C-by-C) through which developers can create software and prove that it correctly implements system requirements. SPARK Pro is a natural solution for safety-critical and high-security programs, where failure could lead to catastrophic consequences.

A major factor in Rockwell Collins’ selection of SPARK Pro was their successful past experience both with the SPARK language and toolset from Altran Praxis and with AdaCore. Rockwell Collins has been using GNAT Pro on a number of projects, and they have found AdaCore’s support services, including the GNAT Tracker web interface, especially valuable. GNAT Tracker provides customers with on-line access to all products and associated documentation purchased, via a simple web interface. Engineers may report problems or ask questions; each report is automatically sent to the AdaCore product development team, ensuring fast and accurate responses. After submitting a report, the customer can use the associated ticket number to view questions and responses and to track the full history of the reported issue.

“Our subscription model encourages customers to contact us as often and frequently as they need,” said Robert Dewar, AdaCore President and CEO. “Our partnership with Altran Praxis allows us to extend this same service to SPARK Pro. SPARK Pro users, such as Rockwell Collins, will benefit from Altran Praxis’s experience with formal methods and the SPARK language, coupled with AdaCore’s support infrastructure, Ada language expertise and tool support.”

The SPARK toolset performs static (before run time) verification that is unrivalled in terms of its soundness, low false-alarm rate, depth, and efficiency. The toolset also generates evidence for correctness that can be used to build a constructive assurance case to meet the requirements of industry regulators and certification schemes. SPARK checks for deep and subtle bugs, including run-time errors such as buffer overflow and arithmetic overflow, and can even verify that application-specific safety and security properties are not violated. The latest release of SPARK Pro, V9.0, includes a number of enhancements, including new information-flow verification for safety and security, a new tool that detects unreachable code, and a new SPARK 2005 language profile.

About Altran Praxis
Altran Praxis is a specialist systems and software house, focused on the engineering of systems with demanding safety, security or innovation requirements. Altran Praxis leads the world in specific areas of advanced systems engineering and innovation such as: ultra low defect software engineering, Human Machine Interface (HMI), safety engineering for complex or novel systems and tools (such as SPARK) /methods for systems engineering. It offers clients a range of services including turnkey systems development, consultancy, training and R&D. Key market sectors are aerospace and defence, rail, nuclear, air traffic management, automotive, medical and security. The company operates globally with active projects in the US, Asia and Europe. The headquarters of Altran Praxis are in Bath (UK) with offices in Sophia Antipolis, London, Paris, Loughborough and Bangalore. Altran Praxis is an expertise centre within, and wholly owned by, Altran which is a global leader in innovation engineering and employs 18,000 staff across the world. www.altran-praxis.com

About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, a state-of-the-art programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where safety, security, and reliability are critical. AdaCore’s flagship product is the GNAT Pro development environment, which comes with expert on-line support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has an extensive world-wide customer base; see http://www.adacore.com/home/company/customers/ for further information.

Ada and GNAT Pro see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified applications, including commercial aircraft avionics, military systems, air traffic management/control, railroad systems, and medical devices, and in security-sensitive domains such as financial services.

AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com

Press Contacts
press@adacore.com

NEW YORK, PARIS and SAN JOSE, Calif., April 27, 2010 – Embedded Systems Conference – AdaCore, a leading supplier of Ada development tools and support services, today announced the first major release of its GNAT Pro High-Integrity Edition for MILS. The High-Integrity Edition for MILS (Multiple Independent Levels of Security) product is a specialized security application development environment supporting the creation and security certification of applications at the high end for EALs (Evaluation Assurance Levels) 5 through 7, as well as applications at the lower bounds for EALs 1 through 4. This product contains several specialized run-time libraries that support different levels of certification, specialized tools to support security certification, and, as an option, the SPARK language tool set to facilitate both development and certification of applications to top security levels.

GNAT Pro High-Integrity Edition for MILS contains the GNAT Pro development environment with compile system, testing tools, and graphical user interface components, to support high-productivity software development. It provides specialized run-time libraries, corresponding to Ada language subsets for those features that can be certified to different EALs. For EALs 1-3, the High-Integrity Edition for MILS provides a full Ada run-time library and development environment for the creation and testing required for these lower-level security certification requirements. For EAL 4, it provides a Ravenscar-compliant run-time library originally created to be certifiable to the DO-178B airborne avionics safety standard. This safety standard has been shown to meet the security assurance requirements for EAL 4. Finally, the Zero Foot Print (ZFP) run-time library is provided, which supports security certification to EALs 5 through 7.

Security certification at EALs 5-7 requires semi-formal or formal approaches. General software application languages are typically not appropriate at these levels. As an option, GNAT Pro High-Integrity Edition for MILS provides the SPARK Pro tool set to support these top levels. The SPARK language is a fully deterministic and verifiable subset of the Ada programming language augmented by pre- and post-condition constructs that more fully specify the application’s logic and information flow. SPARK and the SPARK Pro tool set have been demonstrated in practice to meet the requirements for top security application development. The High-Integrity Edition for MILS thus provides a complete environment for applications that need to be certified at EALs 5-7.

“AdaCore has a long history in providing solutions for developers of high-integrity applications,” said Robert Dewar, President and CEO of AdaCore. “GNAT Pro has been used for avionics systems on aircraft, such as the new Boeing 787, which need to meet the highest level of safety requirements in DO-178B. Developers of high-security applications require the more stringent security objectives be met. To satisfy this need, we have introduced the GNAT Pro High-Integrity Edition for MILS. This product, integrated with the SPARK Pro language and tool set, offers a unique security solution, allowing developers using a MILS architecture to create and certify applications that can meet all EALs from lowest to highest.”

“Wind River VxWorks MILS platform provides a robust MILS architecture, enabling the creation of MLS (Multi-Level Secure) systems in which multiple applications from different domains execute securely on a single instance of silicon,” said Chip Downing, Director of Aerospace and Defense at Wind River. “GNAT Pro High-Integrity Edition for MILS adds the capability to accelerate the certification of Ada applications at high assurance levels on the VxWorks MILS foundation for a very powerful combination for developing secure applications.”

Availability
GNAT Pro High-Integrity Edition for MILS is available today for the VxWorks MILS Platform.

About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, a state-of-the-art programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where safety, security, and reliability are critical. AdaCore’s flagship product is the GNAT Pro development environment, which comes with expert on-line support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has an extensive world-wide customer base; see http://www.adacore.com/home/company/customers/ for further information.

Ada and GNAT Pro continue to see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified applications, including commercial aircraft avionics, military systems, air traffic management/control, railroad systems, and medical devices, and in security-sensitive domains such as financial services.

AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com

Press Contacts
press@adacore.com

PARIS, NEW YORK and BATH, England – April 13, 2010 – AdaCore today announced a new global licensing agreement with world-leading missile systems company MBDA. The three-year agreement will see the MBDA Group of companies extend its existing contract with AdaCore to now include the SPARK Pro high assurance software development toolset, as well as the GNAT Pro development environment.

The combined contract, which covers 80 developers, will enable MBDA to benefit from a single access point for all software and support queries, as well as the advantages of using a single development platform that spans the tightly integrated SPARK Pro and GNAT Pro.

This builds on MBDA’s existing long-term commitment to the Ada programming language and use of SPARK Pro and GNAT Pro as corporate standards. MBDA is already using the toolsets on its mission-critical missile systems.

“Successfully developing reliable, high integrity software is critical to MBDA’s world-leading portfolio of products,” said Colin McDonald, Software Performance Evaluation Manager, MBDA. “The Ada language is the perfect fit for our global needs as it delivers unsurpassed safety and reliability. The combination of GNAT Pro and SPARK Pro provides a complete solution across the entire development process, backed up by comprehensive support for our projects.”

“Global, long-term contracts such as this one give us the opportunity to associate major customers with our technology roadmap,” said Cyrille Comar, Managing Director, AdaCore. “The combination of GNAT Pro and SPARK Pro provides an integrated solution to the development and verification of the most critical parts of high integrity systems. MBDA’s input and feedback on the evolution of this solution allows us to stay focused on the needs and trends of the industry we serve.”

MBDA chose AdaCore and GNAT Pro due to the wide variety of platforms they support, including native hosts, such as Microsoft Windows, Sun Solaris and GNU/Linux. The contract covers GNAT Pro, SPARK Pro and the SPARK Pro Black Belt edition, which features support for concurrent programming and integral proof checker.

“This extended licensing agreement with MBDA demonstrates the major benefits of our close working relationship with AdaCore and the advantages it brings to our global customer base,” said Keith Williams, Altran Praxis Managing Director. “It shows that for the creation of innovative, high integrity systems, the combination of SPARK Pro and GNAT Pro is the natural choice.”

Ada is a state-of-the-art, internationally standardized language that has proven its value for developing large, long-lived applications where safety and reliability are essential. It has consequently become a leading language in commercial and military avionics, air traffic control, high-speed rail systems and nuclear power systems.

SPARK Pro was created by Altran Praxis, the international specialist in critical systems engineering and safety assurance, and AdaCore, the leading provider of commercial software solutions for the Ada language. SPARK provides the foremost language, toolset and design discipline for the engineering of high-assurance software. It combines Praxis’ renowned SPARK language and verification tools, with the GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) and GNATbench development environments from AdaCore. Frontline support is provided through GNAT Tracker, AdaCore’s web-based support system.

At the heart of AdaCore’s GNAT Pro is a full-featured, multi-language (Ada, C, C++) development environment complete with libraries, bindings generators and a range of supplementary tools, including code coverage, code metrics, documentation generator and code standard checker. All its technology combines the flexibility and freedom associated with open source development and the assurance that comes from knowing that all tools go through a rigorous quality assurance process. It is based on the widely used GCC technology and is backed by rapid and expert support service.

About MBDA
With industrial facilities in four European countries and within the USA, MBDA has an annual turnover of €2.7 billion and an order book of €11.9 billion. With more than 90 armed forces customers in the world, MBDA is a world leader in missiles and missile systems.

MBDA is the only group capable of designing and producing missiles and missile systems that correspond to the full range of current and future operational needs of the three armed forces (land, sea and air). In total, the group offers a range of 45 missile systems and countermeasures products already in operational service and more than 15 others currently in development.

MBDA is jointly held by BAE SYSTEMS (37.5%), EADS (37.5%) and FINMECCANICA (25%). www.mbda-systems.com

About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, a state-of-the-art programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where safety, security, and reliability are critical. AdaCore’s flagship product is the GNAT Pro development environment, which comes with expert on-line support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has an extensive world-wide customer base; see http://www.adacore.com/home/company/customers/ for further information.

Ada and GNAT Pro see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified applications, including commercial aircraft avionics, military systems, air traffic management/control, railroad systems, and medical devices, and in security-sensitive domains such as financial services.

AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com

About Altran Praxis
Altran Praxis is a specialist systems and software house, focused on the engineering of systems with demanding safety, security or innovation requirements. Altran Praxis leads the world in specific areas of advanced systems engineering and innovation such as: ultra low defect software engineering, Human Machine Interface (HMI), safety engineering for complex or novel systems and tools (such as SPARK) /methods for systems engineering. It offers clients a range of services including turnkey systems development, consultancy, training and R&D. Key market sectors are aerospace and defence, rail, nuclear, air traffic management, automotive, medical and security. The company operates globally with active projects in the US, Asia and Europe. The headquarters of Altran Praxis are in Bath (UK) with offices in Sophia Antipolis, London, Paris, Loughborough and Bangalore. Altran Praxis is an expertise centre within, and wholly owned by, Altran which is a global leader in innovation engineering and employs 17,000 staff across the world. www.altran-praxis.com

Press Contacts
press@adacore.com

AMSTERDAM, NEW YORK and PARIS, March 24, 2010 – Avionics Europe 2010 – SPARK Pro 9, announced today by AdaCore and Altran Praxis, provides a major step forward for developers creating safety critical and high assurance systems. The advanced open source development environment now features increased security functionality, including the ability to verify and assure Multiple Independent Levels of Security (MILS) within the same application as well as support for the latest SPARK2005 language profile.

SPARK Pro was created one year ago by Altran Praxis, international specialist in embedded and critical systems engineering, and AdaCore, the leading provider of commercial software solutions for the Ada language. SPARK Pro provides the foremost language, toolset and design discipline for engineering high-assurance software. It combines Altran Praxis’ renowned SPARK language and verification tools, with the GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) and GNATbench development environments from AdaCore.

The new release of SPARK Pro 9 demonstrates the forward momentum of the toolset and introduces significant new features to benefit developers. Chief amongst these is the ability to mix software of different security levels (such as classified and unclassified) within the same system. This MILS functionality meets the increasing trend in the aerospace and defence industries to combine multiple secure and non-secure elements into a single system to deliver smaller, more integrated solutions.

“We’ve seen significant growth in the use of SPARK Pro since its launch last year across the safety critical and high assurance markets,” said Keith Williams, Altran Praxis Managing Director. “SPARK Pro 9 continues this market momentum and introduces important new features, particularly in the growing high security sector. It demonstrates the continuing benefits of our close partnership with AdaCore to our customers across the globe.”

Over half of new features in SPARK Pro 9 are the result of customer feedback. As well as support for the advanced features of SPARK2005, the latest version of the SPARK language, closer integration between SPARK and GPS results in improved usability and faster development times.

“In MILS-oriented Operating Systems, mixing safely different levels of security assurance requires a complex multi-partition organization. SPARK Pro 9 now provides the means to verify accurately such a mix in the context of a single application through sound information flow analysis,” said Cyrille Comar, Managing Director, AdaCore. “This capability offers an unprecedented level of flexibility for those writing rich applications with stringent security requirements.”

Developed by Praxis, SPARK is a language specifically designed to support the development of software used in applications where correct operation is vital for reasons of safety, security, or both. The SPARK toolset offers static verification that is unrivalled in terms of its soundness, low false-alarm rate, depth and efficiency. The toolset also generates evidence for correctness that can be used to build a constructive assurance case in line with the requirements of industry regulators and certification schemes. There are versions of SPARK based on Ada 83, Ada 95, and Ada 2005, so all standard Ada compilers and tools work out-of-the-box with SPARK.

SPARK Pro 9 new functions include:

• New information-flow verification for safety and security policies, such as Bell-LaPadula, based on integrity labelling of variables, inputs and outputs. This facility allows users to confirm intended separation properties, and to prevent violations of the chosen information flow policy.
• SPARK2005. The new SPARK2005 language profile is now available. At present, Ada2005 features supported include ‘Mod, ‘Machine_Rounding, new reserved words, and the static semantics of “overriding.”
• New ZombieScope tool, which detects dead statements, branches and paths in SPARK code, complementing the capabilities of the Simplifier and proof status summarizer POGS.
• Cross Referencing annotations in GPS. The Examiner now generates cross-reference information that can be consumed by GPS to drive navigation within annotations.
• Function return annotations are now treated more like procedure post-conditions, being substituted into the VC hypotheses of the caller. This can dramatically improve the effectiveness of the theorem prover for those calling units, as well as reducing the manual work required by the user to provide rewrite rules.
• New output format for POGS. This format is designed to be both easier to read and easier to search automatically. It also reflects the results of the new ZombieScope tool.
• Simpler documentation structure. All proof material is now in one manual, and a new global index (in both clickable PDF and HTML forms) simplifies finding topics in the entire manual set.
• Case checking. New Examiner switch that insists on consistent casing within annotations.

Webinar

 A webinar providing an introduction and demonstration of SPARK Pro 9 will be held on April 27, 2010. It will begin at 5pm European Daylight Time/4pm GMT Daylight Time/11am Eastern Daylight Time/8am Pacific Daylight Time. To register please visit:
http://www.adacore.com/home/products/gnatpro/webinars/

About Altran Praxis
Altran Praxis is a specialist systems and software house, focused on the engineering of systems with demanding safety, security or innovation requirements. Altran Praxis leads the world in specific areas of advanced systems engineering and innovation such as: ultra low defect software engineering, Human Machine Interface (HMI), safety engineering for complex or novel systems and tools (such as SPARK) /methods for systems engineering. It offers clients a range of services including turnkey systems development, consultancy, training and R&D. Key market sectors are aerospace and defence, rail, nuclear, air traffic management, automotive, medical and security. The company operates globally with active projects in the US, Asia and Europe. The headquarters of Altran Praxis are in Bath (UK) with offices in Sophia Antipolis, London, Paris, Loughborough and Bangalore. Altran Praxis is an expertise centre within, and wholly owned by, Altran which is a global leader in innovation engineering and employs 17,000 staff across the world. www.altran-praxis.com

About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, the state-of-the-art programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where safety, security, and reliability are critical. AdaCore’s flagship product is the GNAT Pro development environment, which comes with expert on-line support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has an extensive world-wide customer base; see www.adacore.com/home/company/customers/ for further information.

Ada and GNAT Pro see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified applications, including commercial aircraft avionics, military systems, air traffic management/control, railway systems and medical devices, and in security-sensitive domains such as financial services.

AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris.

Press Contacts
press@adacore.com

The display unit runs up to seven flight- and mission-critical applications, including pfd, mfd, maps, video, maintenance and charts. It is based on Barco’s open, modular MOSArt infrastructure with each application meeting different criticality levels within the DO-178B standard. AdaCore was selected due to its close relationship with Wind River and its ability to provide traceability evidence between source and object code, ensuring faster standards compliance.

Barco’s MOSArt system is based on VxWorks 653, an ARINC 653 compliant kernel that allows integration of several applications into the same unit. The VxWorks 653 operating system guarantees segregation of other Barco (or customer) avionics software applications. MOSArt’s open, modular approach reduces weight and power consumption and improves mean time between failures by allowing the integration of several applications into the same hardware platform. With MOSArt, every partition can have a different criticality level (up to DO-178B level A) for minimal certification cost.

Global technology company Barco designs and develops visualization products for a variety of selected professional markets. Every day, nearly 100 of the world’s leading aircraft and helicopter types take off with Barco’s advanced avionics display technologies on board.

“To enable the delivery of advanced avionics display solutions, we require extreme high-integrity development software,” said Brecht Baert, R&D Manager Open Systems, Barco Avionics Division. “AdaCore’s traceability kit, tools that help simplify and automate certain DO-178B processes, and close partnership with Wind River were the natural choices for this project because they exactly met our needs.”

GNAT Pro High-Integrity Edition for DO-178B is an enhanced version of the GNAT Pro Ada development environment, designed for building safe and secure software. Its many features help to reduce the cost of developing and certifying systems that have to meet safety standards, such as RTCA DO-178B / EUROCAE ED-12B and other high-integrity standards. The product was specifically tailored to provide the features needed in the development of avionics systems, while removing unneeded features to simplify certification to DO-178B Level A. Barco is also using the GNAT Pro Traceability Kit. This is designed to help developers to meet the stringent DO-178B safety critical avionics standard by enabling full traceability between the source and object code.

“Barco is a long standing AdaCore customer and the regular and close contacts that AdaCore establishes with his customers brought significant benefits in the context of the MOSArt platform developed by Barco,” said Michaël Friess, Sales & Business Development Manager, AdaCore. “In the MOSArt platform, the Ada language has been chosen for its particular adaptation to the stringent development processes required by Level A of the DO-178B standard. To complement this choice, AdaCore has used its expertise to provide a Traceability Kit that replaces the long and costly traditional source to object code traceability analysis while still increasing the language subset allowed.”

About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, a state-of-the-art programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where safety, security, and reliability are critical. AdaCore’s flagship product is the GNAT Pro development environment, which comes with expert on-line support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has an extensive world-wide customer base; see http://www.adacore.com/home/company/customers/ for further information.

Ada and GNAT Pro see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified applications, including commercial aircraft avionics, military systems, air traffic management/control, railway systems, and medical devices, and in security-sensitive domains such as financial services. The SPARK Pro toolset, available from AdaCore, is especially useful in such contexts.

AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris.

About Barco
Barco, a global technology company, designs and develops visualization products for a variety of selected professional markets. Barco has its own facilities for Sales & Marketing, Customer Support, R&D and Manufacturing in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Barco (NYSE Euronext Brussels: BAR) is active in more than 90 countries with about 3100 employees worldwide. Barco posted sales of 638 million euro in 2009

Press Contacts
press@adacore.com

BRISTOL, United Kingdom, NEW YORK and PARIS, February 9, 2010 – Safety-Critical Systems Symposium – AdaCore, a leading supplier of Ada development tools and support services, today announced the latest major release of its GNAT Pro Ada development environment. GNAT Pro 6.3 is now available on several new platforms including 64-bit Windows, Windows 7, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, VxWorks MILS, and PikeOS (ARINC 653). The product incorporates performance improvements and a variety of enhancements, many based on customer feedback, and it offers the first implementation of new Ada 2012 features. GNAT Pro 6.3 works with a number of complementary tools, sold separately, including the CodePeer automated code review and validation tool.

“We continually strive to provide our customers with world-class development tools, technical consulting, and product support that exceed their expectations,” said Robert Dewar, President and CEO of AdaCore. “GNAT Pro 6.3 demonstrates our commitment to this goal and continues the company’s tradition of providing annual major releases for our products.”

“With this new release, GNAT Pro supports a wide range of additional platforms, with a particular emphasis on 64 bit architectures,” said Cyrille Comar, Managing Director, AdaCore Europe. “This regular adaptation to new environments is critical for many of our customers who work on safety critical applications whose lifespans cross many hardware generations and operating system transitions. Our challenge is to find, every year, more efficient ways of producing and qualifying to the highest standards, an increasing number of tools running on an increasing number of platforms.”

New GNAT Pro 6.3 features include:

• Support for 64-bit code generation on Windows
• Support for Windows 7
• Improvements to a number of tools, including:
• Pretty printer (gnatpp)
• Coding standard verifier (GNATcheck)
• Stack size analyzer (GNATstack)
• Other tool enhancements:
• Unused dispatching subprogram elimination (gnatelim)
• More flexible project handling
• More efficient gnatmake and gprbuild
• C and C++ binding generation
• Compiler and debugger enhancements, including:
• Many additional warnings
• More flexible enabling/disabling of warnings
• Faster Unbounded_String implementation
• Removal of redundant run-time checks
• Support for Ada 2012 conditional expressions
• Code generation (speed and size) improvements
• More compact debugging information
• Improved interfacing with C++

GNAT Pro 6.3 also includes a new version of the GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) IDE, GPS 4.4.1, and an improved download interface in AdaCore’s GNAT Tracker support tool.

About GNAT Pro
The GNAT Pro development environment, available on more platforms than any other Ada toolset, is a full-featured, multi-language development environment complete with libraries, bindings and a range of supplementary tools. It provides a natural solution for organizations that need to create reliable, efficient, and maintainable code. GNAT Pro implements all three versions of the Ada language standard – Ada 83, Ada 95, and Ada 2005 – and the latest version of GNAT Pro implements some of the new features in Ada 2012. GNAT Pro is based on the widely used GCC technology and is backed by rapid and expert support service.

About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, a state-of-the-art programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where safety, security, and reliability are critical. AdaCore’s flagship product is the GNAT Pro development environment, which comes with expert on-line support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has an extensive world-wide customer base; see http://www.adacore.com/home/company/customers/ for further information.

Ada and GNAT Pro continue to see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified applications, including commercial aircraft avionics, military systems, air traffic management/control, railroad systems, and medical devices, and in security-sensitive domains such as financial services.

AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris.

Press Contacts
press@adacore.com