Digicomp Shows Continuing Success with Ada and GNAT Pro

Company reaffirms long-standing relationship with AdaCore

BOSTON, Mass., NEW YORK and PARIS, September 27, 2011 – Embedded Systems Conference – AdaCore, provider of tools and expertise for the mission-critical, safety-critical, and security-critical software communities, today announced that Digicomp Research has reaffirmed their commitment to Ada based on their continuing success with the language, by renewing their long-standing subscription for the GNAT Pro Ada development environment. Digicomp, a system engineering and software development company specializing in military and defense applications, has been an AdaCore customer for more than a decade, using GNAT Pro to successfully implement and deploy a variety of mission-critical systems on Sparc Solaris, x86 Solaris, and Linux platforms.

“The greatest advantage to working with AdaCore is the fast, comprehensive, and authoritative technical support,” said Dan DeJohn, Sr. Systems Analyst of Digicomp. “I often tell a story of my isolating a tools problem related to Ada generic packages while I was traveling in South Africa. I emailed the problem report to AdaCore early on New Year's Day and got a reply with a workaround the same day. It is wonderful to get answers so quickly from the real Ada experts.”

Digicomp started using Ada in 1990 when the company was awarded a contract to build a new radar tracking, data fusion, and command and control system for use at Tyndall AFB (Florida). They were free to choose the programming language for the project, and they selected Ada for its expressiveness, its error detection, and its support for building software components and subsystems that can be combined without unstated coupling of modules.

Since that time, the company has successfully used the Ada language for multiple programs based on its proven ability to support development of reliable software in a cost effective manner. Core characteristics of the language allow for coding errors to be detected early in the software life cycle, when they can be corrected with the least cost.

Current Digicomp projects using Ada and GNAT Pro include: the Mode 4 Interrogation Support rack-mount computer system; the Air Surveillance and Control System, which is used for weapons control, bombing range safety, and surveillance; and the Operational Flight Program (OFP) for the Symbol Generator Unit (SGU) on the MH53-J helicopter.

“The Ada run-time software for the MH53-J includes multiple tasks to perform input and output from several sensors, to communicate with other aircraft systems over the MIL-STD-1553B data bus, and to update the symbology display at a 10 Hz frame rate,” Dan DeJohn continued. “Ada’s good information hiding facilitated writing an emulator for the final display hardware so that we could design, implement, and demonstrate the symbol generation prior to availability of the final system hardware. This inherent capability was invaluable as it allowed us to deliver on time despite delays in obtaining the final hardware.”

”We pride ourselves on the quality of our development tools and high level of expertise in supporting our customers. Thus Digicomp’s continued commitment to Ada and GNAT Pro means a lot to us,” said Robert Dewar, AdaCore President and CEO. “The longevity of our relationship with Digicomp and the continued successful performance of Ada and GNAT Pro within their various applications proves the stamina and reliability of the Ada programming language and underscores the importance of choosing the right development language based on the type of system to be developed.”

About Digicomp Research
Digicomp was founded in 1975, in Ithaca, New York, and has over 30 years of continuous experience providing software engineering services and products to large defense contractors, and US and Canadian governments. The company is experienced in all phases of product development, from customer requirements to operational test and deployment, with a proven track record of meeting cost and schedule requirements.
www.digicomp.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, 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. www.adacore.com

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