AdaCore Announces First to Market Full Ada 2005 Development Environments

NEW YORK and AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, March 7, 2007 - Avionics Exhibition and Convention - AdaCore, provider of the highest quality Ada tools and support, announces the first to market Ada 2005 language development environment, with the release of GNAT Pro version 6.0.1. Ada 2005, ISO/IEC 8652, was formally approved by ISO SC22/WG9 in January 2007. From the start AdaCore has actively participated in the ISO language standard revision process. This has enabled us to be at the forefront in supporting our customers and their use of the new Ada 2005 language standard.

“AdaCore has established a strong reputation of providing the industry’s highest quality Ada tools and support for our customers,” said Robert Dewar, President of AdaCore. “We are proud to be the first company to provide complete support for Ada 2005. AdaCore is now unique in the industry as the only vendor to support all three ISO versions of the Ada language. We support our customers working on existing long-lived Ada 83 systems. We support development teams using the current Ada 95 language. And we are now the first to support customers who want to start using the new ISO Ada 2005 language standard.”

Ada 2005 is a refinement on an already strong foundation. The original Ada 83 language version introduced new programming language concepts including built in exception handling, generic program templates and multi processing tasks. Ada 95 added to this foundation by adding new deterministic task communication and Object Oriented programming features, making it the first ISO OO language standard. It also added special needs annexes to meet different industries’ requirements, such as the Safety and Security Annex. This annex in particular standardized capabilities to further support an area where the language had already proven itself to be extremely valuable. This support has made Ada a leading language for avionics safety critical systems, such that it is now in use on almost every modern military and commercial aircraft flying or under development.

The new Ada 2005 language offers significant enhancements to software developers in several areas. Improvements in the language's Object-Oriented Programming features include the addition of Java-like interfaces and traditional "object.operation" syntax. More flexible program structuring allows mutually dependent package specifications and makes it easier to interface with languages such as Java. Real-time system support includes additional task dispatching policies such as Earliest Deadline First, execution-time clocks, and handlers for task termination. The concurrency and object-oriented features are successfully unified through a new interface feature that allows implementation through either a sequential or concurrent type.

Support for safety and security is enhanced with the inclusion of the Ravenscar Profile (a tasking subset that is amenable to safety certification), syntax that avoids some common Object-Oriented Programming errors with inheritance, and a mechanism for defining language profiles. Other enhancements increase the language's general expressiveness, for example by allowing nested subprograms to be passed as run-time parameters, and by extending the predefined environment with new functionality, such as a Containers library.

The 6.0.1 release also includes an enhanced version of the GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) IDE. GPS 4.1.0 offers programmers improved usability and efficiency through an advanced Outline View complete with new design and new features. Python and pygtk enable powerful scripting and customized dialog capabilities and are now supported on all platforms. Developers can make use of a wider range of plug-ins more effectively from within GPS thanks to enhanced support. A more intelligent smart completion engine coupled with automatic fixing for more compiler messages enables an all round smoother development process.

About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, a modern programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where reliability, efficiency and safety are critical. AdaCore’s flagship product is GNAT Pro, which comes with expert online support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has customers worldwide; see http://www.adacore.com/home/company/customers/ for more information.

Use of Ada and GNAT Pro continues to grow in high-integrity and safety-critical applications, including commercial and defense aircraft avionics, air traffic control, railroad systems, financial services and medical devices. AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com

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