Ada – a programming language which was originally targeted at embedded systems and is designed towards massive software systems, has just received approval from International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for its Ada 2012 revision. The language which focuses on software reliability and safety as its crux, has among others, an ability of being able to get packages compiled separately without consistency checks. This is uniquely suited to industries like commercial aviation, railways, communication systems, space exploration, Banking and Defence. It is most popularly used by Boeing, NASA and our very own metro rail system in Calcutta. It also used all around the world in Air Traffic Control Systems.
The new Ada 2012 standard brings several new features to the language. This includes some major enhancements with contract based programming. This allows the user to specify preconditions, postconditions and invariants in the form of boolean expressions. There is also increased expressiveness with the help of expression functions along with conditional and quantified expressions. There is some much needed multicore support with task affinities and the extension of Ravenscar profile. Other changes are in the containers library include Bounded and Holder Containers, task safe and priority queues and powerful iterators.
“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 paramount,” Dr. Edmond Schonberg – Rapporteur of the Ada Rapporteur Group (ARG) said, “The new news here, which distinguishes Ada from other languages, is that contracts are part of the standard language syntax and semantics where they can be exploited by the compiler.”
The language revision, known as Ada 2012, was 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 Ada Resource Association (ARA) and Ada-Europe. The formal approval of the standard was issued on November 20 by ISO/IEC JTC 1, and the standard was published on December 15.
For more info you may refer to the www.ada2012.org website.
