Conference announcements

Announcement -
Ada in Sweden Seminar

Ada in Sweden organizes its Seminar on Thursday April 13, in Uppsala, Sweden.

The full program of this "Ada i Sverige Seminar" is available at http://www.ada-i-sverige.se/spring00.PDF

[ Extracts follow: -- dc ]

Presentations by:

• Lars Asplund, University of Uppsala, Sweden

• Rod Chapman, Praxis Critical Systems, U.K.

  High-integrity development with SPARK

  The SPADE Ada Kernel (SPARK) is an annotated subset of Ada desiged for the programming of high-integrity systems. The first half of this presentation will describe the design goals of SPARK, the principles behind the language, and the financial implications of meeting standards such as Def-Stan 00-55 and DO-178B. Future enhancements to the language and the SPARK tools will also be considered.

  Proof more cost-effective than testing? Industrial experience with SPARK...

  The second part of the talk will focus on experience gained from real SPARK projects, chiefly from SHOLIS - the first software project to attempt to meet the requirements of IDS 00-55. Metrics gathered from the SHOLIS project show that static analysis and proof were more effective and cheaper than traditional unit-and integration-testing. We will also consider other projects, such as the Lockheed C130J Mission Computer (which underwent a certification to DO-178B Level A), the MULTOS CA (a non-traditional use of Ada), and a less successful SPARK project.

  Rod Chapman is a software engineer with Praxis Critical Systems, of Bath, UK. He joined Praxis in July 1995, following four years working for the British Aerospace Dependable Computing Systems Centre at the University of York, where he gained a DPhil for his research into static timing analysis and program proof. Since joining Praxis, Rod has worked on several safety-critical projects including the Lockheed C130J Mission Computer, SHOLIS (the first software project to meet Interim Defence Standard 00-55), and the MULTOS CA - a high security financial application. Rod is currently a member of the SPARK development team, working on the SPARK language design, tool support, training, and research topics such as the Ravenscar profile.

  Rod is a member of the Ada95 Real-Time Issues Working Group, and has presented papers at several conferences, including AdaUK.

• John McCormick, University of Northern Iowa, U.S.A.

  Ada, Model Railroading, and Software Engineering Education

  How do you select a programming language for your project? Few developers have the luxury of coding the same design in multiple languages to compare language merits. For fifteen years my undergraduate students have implemented the same large (12-15K lines), multi-tasking, real-time embedded system. In one 15 week semester, student teams specify, design, and implement software to control a substantial model railroad layout. Minimum requirements include the running of multiple trains with at least one controlled by a human engineer, no collisions, and detection and recovery from malfunctioning railroad and communication hardware. Students implement everything from device drivers for custom I/O hardware to high-level decision making algorithms. Student teams have implemented the project in both Ada and C. My presentation will describe the course, the laboratory, the project, and an analysis of the results achieved with each of the implementation languages.

  John McCormick is Professor and Head of the Computer Science Department at the University of Northern Iowa. Previously, he was Professor of Computer Science at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh where he received the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is the principal author of two Ada-based textbooks for introductory computer science courses. He received his BS degree from the Pennsylvania State University and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles.

To the Ada-Belgium home page.

Last update: 2000/04/09.