Press Release - Ada 2012 Language Standard Submitted to ISO

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ada 2012 Language Standard Submitted to ISO

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


STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN, June 12, 2012 - At the Ada-Europe 2012 conference
in Stockholm, the Ada Resource Association (ARA) and Ada-Europe
today announced the completion of the design of the latest version
of the Ada programming language and the submission of the reference
manual to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
for approval. The language revision, known as Ada 2012, is 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." New features here include the
ability to specify preconditions and postconditions for subprograms,
and invariants for private (encapsulated) types. These take the form
of Boolean expressions that can be interpreted (under programmer
control) as run-time conditions to be checked. The contract-based
programming features fit in smoothly with Ada's Object-Oriented
Programming model, and support the type substitutability guidance
supplied in the Object-Oriented Technologies and Related Techniques
Supplement (DO-332) to the new avionics software safety standard
DO-178C / ED-12C.

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).

"Ada 2012 is a major advance in the state of the art," said Dr. Edmond
Schonberg, Rapporteur of the ARG. "The new features answer real user
needs, and help cement Ada's reputation as a language of choice for
systems where reliability, safety, and security are needed."

"The Ada Rapporteur Group did an excellent job of carrying out
the language revision," said Dr. Joyce Tokar, Convenor of WG9.
"Special thanks to Randy Brukardt for his editorial work on the
Language Reference Manual, and to Ed Schonberg and all the other
ARG members. Ada 2012 is a significant technical accomplishment."

Formal ISO approval of the Ada 2012 revision is expected in late 2012.

With the growing complexity of software systems in most aspects of
our daily professional and personal life, program correctness is a
paramount concern. Ada 2012 provides outstanding solutions to that
end, which can be applied both in industry for production software
development, and in academia for teaching and research.


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).


About Ada-Europe

Ada-Europe is the international non-profit organization that
promotes the knowledge and use of the Ada programming language in
academia, research and industry in Europe. Its flagship event is the
annual international conference on reliable software technologies, a
high-quality technical and scientific event that has been successfully
running in the current format for the last 17 years. Ada-Europe has
member organizations all over the continent, in Belgium, Denmark,
France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland, as well as individual
members in many other countries. For information about Ada-Europe,
its charter, activities and sponsors, please visit: www.ada-europe.org.
Ada-Europe is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.


Organization Contacts

Ada Resource Association
Ben Brosgol, ARA President
brosgol@adacore.com

Ada-Europe
Tullio Vardanega, Ada-Europe President
tullio.vardanega@math.unipd.it


Press Contacts

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

Ada-Europe
Dirk Craeynest, Ada-Europe Vice-president
c/o KU Leuven, Department of Computer Science
dirk.craeynest@cs.kuleuven.be
(Ada2012.1)

Congratulations. It's a very good news.

Very good news indeed.

Next up: GNAT GPL 2012 for us mere mortals, so we can actually get to toying around with Ada 2012.

Life is good in Ada land these days.

On Tuesday, June 12, 2012 7:08:10 AM UTC-7, Thomas Løcke wrote:
> Very good news indeed.
>
> Next up: GNAT GPL 2012 for us mere mortals, so we can actually get to toying around with Ada 2012.
>
> Life is good in Ada land these days.

It is a perfect timing since GNAT GPL 2012 will be out shortly according tohttp://libre.adacore.com/

On 06/12/2012 11:44 AM, Anh Vo wrote:
> On Tuesday, June 12, 2012 7:08:10 AM UTC-7, Thomas Løcke wrote:
>> Very good news indeed.
>>
>> Next up: GNAT GPL 2012 for us mere mortals, so we can actually get to toying around with Ada 2012.
>>
>> Life is good in Ada land these days.
>
> It is a perfect timing since GNAT GPL 2012 will be out shortly according to http://libre.adacore.com/
But will it have the implementation of full Ada 2012? :-)

--
---
BrianG
000
@[Google's email domain]
..com

BrianG <me@null.email> writes:

> On 06/12/2012 11:44 AM, Anh Vo wrote:
>> On Tuesday, June 12, 2012 7:08:10 AM UTC-7, Thomas Løcke wrote:
>>> Very good news indeed.
>>>
>>> Next up: GNAT GPL 2012 for us mere mortals, so we can actually get to toying around with Ada 2012.
>>>
>>> Life is good in Ada land these days.
>>
>> It is a perfect timing since GNAT GPL 2012 will be out shortly according to http://libre.adacore.com/
> But will it have the implementation of full Ada 2012? :-)

Follow the link!

--
-- Stephe

On 06/16/2012 09:37 AM, Stephen Leake wrote:
> BrianG<me@null.email> writes:
>
>> On 06/12/2012 11:44 AM, Anh Vo wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, June 12, 2012 7:08:10 AM UTC-7, Thomas Løcke wrote:
>>>> Very good news indeed.
>>>>
>>>> Next up: GNAT GPL 2012 for us mere mortals, so we can actually get to toying around with Ada 2012.
>>>>
>>>> Life is good in Ada land these days.
>>>
>>> It is a perfect timing since GNAT GPL 2012 will be out shortly according to http://libre.adacore.com/
>> But will it have the implementation of full Ada 2012? :-)
>
> Follow the link!
>
So, the answer is "no" ("This release provides support for most features
in the upcoming Ada 2012 language revision"). That was my point -
Gnat2012 /= Ada2012 (actually, not-necessarily-equal, but I don't know
the symbol for that).

(Since I posted the original, I have developed a need to upgrade my GPL
version, so your reply gives me a good excuse to do that - either now or
"soon".)

--
---
BrianG
000
@[Google's email domain]
..com