Ada 2005 Standard Receives Technical Approval; Formal Standardization by International Organization for Standardization Anticipated Soon

Business Wire, May 2, 2006

SALT LAKE CITY -- Today at the Systems & Software Technology Conference the Ada Resource Association announced the accomplishment of a major milestone in the development of the new Ada ISO standard. ISO's Ada Working Group (WG 9) has unanimously accepted the proposed amendment to the language and has forwarded it to the parent organization for an official ballot. Formal approval by ISO is expected some time later this year.

The new amendment to the language, commonly referred to as Ada 2005, culminates a collaborative international effort to enhance the 1995 version of the Ada language. The effort was sponsored in part by the Ada Resource Association, which helped support the work of the project editor, Mr. Randall Brukardt.

"Gaining WG 9 approval for the amendment to the language is a key step," said Mr. James Moore, Convener of WG 9. "The new features draw on programming language design and user experience over the past ten years, and they should serve to increase Ada's attractiveness in applications where reliability, safety, efficiency, and maintainability are demanded."

"Ada 2005 is a breakthrough in language technology," added Dr. Ben Brosgol, President of the Ada Resource Association. "It has advanced the state of the art in language design while preserving Ada's long-standing support for sound software engineering. WG 9 is to be congratulated for bringing this effort to fruition with a strong consensus on the features being added."

Ada 2005 offers significant enhancements 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.

About the Ada Resource Association

The Ada Resource Association (ARA) is an international Ada advocacy trade group comprising major Ada language and tool vendors. The ARA financially supports the maintenance of the Ada language standard and is committed to ensuring the continued success and expanded usage of Ada-related technology. Current ARA members are AdaCore, IBM Rational Software, Polyspace Technologies, Praxis High Integrity Systems, and SofCheck. www.adaresource.org