Qualification Material Available for GNATcheck and GNATcoverage

AdaCore releases components allowing more agile software certification

NEW YORK, PARIS and TOULOUSE, France, November 29, 2011 - Certification Together Conference – AdaCore, provider of Ada tools and expertise for the mission-critical, safety-critical, and security-critical software communities, today announced the availability of qualification material for two tools: GNATcheck, an Ada coding standard and rule checker; and GNATcoverage, a non-intrusive structural code coverage analyzer. These qualification documents extend existing AdaCore certification material that includes the Traceability Analysis Package, a source-to-object code traceability study for the GNAT Pro High-Integrity Edition. These new products will help the development of certified applications compliant with the DO-178B avionics software safety standard, up to level A, and will apply equally to DO-178C, the upcoming revision to DO-178B.

The qualification packages allow developers to take credit for the use of the GNATcheck and GNATcoverage tools in the certification of applications in accordance with the DO-178B standard, at level A and below (Table A5 objective 4, and Table A7 objectives 5, 6, and 7, respectively).

The Traceability Analysis Package answers the need for the additional verification work required by DO-178B, level A, as part of the structural code coverage activity. It enables the use of the GNAT Pro compiler to meet Table A7 objective 7, in accordance with the guidelines described in the Certification Authority Software Team’s Position Paper CAST-12. The traceability analysis material establishes traceability between source code and object code and provides additional verification for untraceable code, as described in section 6.4.4.2.b of the DO-178B standard. The analysis is performed on a set of code patterns that is representative of the customer’s application.

With this release, AdaCore has taken the first steps in developing a certification artifacts management system. Named the “Qualifying Machine,” it is an agile framework that supports the development, maintenance and modification of software tools and their associated qualification material. It facilitates providing multiple versions of a tool, each supported by its accurate and up-to-date qualification material. Modifying the tool to integrate new features, or fixing reported issues, is now possible, and requalification can be done incrementally and in a cost-effective manner. The ultimate goal is to fully support an agile, incremental, and continuous certification process that automates the most time-consuming certification activities, such as the management and verification of traceability data. This strategy was described in a recent EE Times article ‘The “Big Thaw” - An Agile Process for Software Certification.’

“Offering off-the-shelf qualifiable tools that evolve and improve along with the rest of the technology is the challenge we are in the process of solving. This will bring the latest and most innovative features to those who need them, without compromising the absolute requirement for safety,” said Cyrille Comar, President, AdaCore Europe.

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

Press Contacts

Jamie Ayre
AdaCore
press@adacore.com
http://twitter.com/AdaCoreCompany

Jessie Glockner
Rainier Communications (for AdaCore)
Tel: 508-475-0025 x140
adacore@rainierco.com
http://twitter.com/JessieGlockner