Tutorial

Ada 2005

John Barnes, Alan Burns, Pascal Leroy, S. Tucker Taft
Friday June 24th, morning

Ada people will recall that the development of Ada 95 from Ada 83 was an extensive process funded by the USDoD. Formal requirements were established after comprehensive surveys of user needs and competitive proposals were then submitted resulting in the selection of Intermetrics as the developer under the devoted leadership of Tucker Taft. The whole technical development process was then comprehensively monitored by a distinct body of Distinguished Reviewers. Of course, the process was also monitored by the ISO committee concerned and the new language finally became an ISO standard in 1995.

The development of Ada 2005 from Ada 95 has been (and continues to be) on a more modest scale. The work has almost entirely been by voluntary effort with support from within the industry itself through bodies such as the Ada Resource Association and Ada-Europe. The Ada Rapporteur Group (the ARG) is drafting the revised standard. The editor, who at the end of the day actually writes the words of the standard, is the indefatigable Randy (fingers) Brukardt.

This tutorial will give an overview of the Ada 2005 language. The presenters are four of the key members of the ARG—John Barnes, Alan Burns, Pascal Leroy (chair of ARG) and Tucker Taft.

The scope of the changes can be summarised as follows:

1. Improvements to the OO model, including the use of Java-like Object.Op notation
2. Introduction of Java-like interfaces (interface is a new reserved word)
3. More flexible access types
4. Enhanced structure and visibility control
5. Tasking and real-time improvements, including new dispatching policies (non-preemptive, round robin and earliest deadline first - EDF), various forms of budget control, and protected, task and synchronized interfaces
6. Improvements to exceptions, generics etc
7. Extensions to the standard library packages, includes a comprehensive Container library (covered in another tutorial)

Together these changes represent a significant enhancement to Ada. Now is the time to improve your knowledge of Ada 2005.

Note the tutorial is at a reduced price for those attending the main conference (and includes lunch).

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