The ARA, founded in 1989 as the Ada Software Alliance, is actively engaged in meeting the expanding requirements of the worldwide Ada user community. The ARA's objective is to promote and enhance the use of the Ada language and associated software engineering technology in applications and programs that benefit the customer.

"The ARA can now speak with confidence for the Ada vendor community," remarked S. Tucker Taft, ARA president and technical director of Averstar's Distributed IT Solutions. "I would like to thank Green Hills for signing on as part of our team. They have already proved to be extremely valuable partners."

"Green Hills Software has always been at the forefront of Ada software development for embedded applications," added John Carbone, vice president of marketing for Green Hills. "In 1990, we announced an Ada-optimized version of our popular MULTI integrated development environment known as AdaMULTI. In 1996, we followed suit with the first fully-validated Ada 95 compiler for embedded applications."

"Ada has proven to be a significant growth area for Green Hills Software," continued Carbone. "Naturally, the fact that Ada is a standard is a strong selling point, particularly in defense applications. However, we are also seeing increased use of Ada in commercial applications, as designers select Ada95 over other programming languages purely on its technical merits. We plan to work with other ARA members to further enhance Ada and make it even more attractive to both defense and commercial developers."

AdaMULTI, together with Green Hills' Ada 95 compiler, automates all aspects of Ada software development. Tightly integrated with Wind River Systems' Tornado framework, AdaMULTI features a window-oriented editor, RTOS-aware source-level debugger, graphical program builder, run-time error checker, code performance and coverage profiler, and both project and version control.

The heart of the AdaMULTI environment is a VxWorks- and Ada95-aware source-level debugger that features both task- and system-level debug capability. The debugger supports mixed-language (Ada95, C, C++, Fortran, and assembly language) programs, includes a language-sensitive expression evaluator, and provides special support for Ada 95 (such as a Class Browser, object display and template debug capability) and X-Windows debugging.

Green Hills' Ada 95 compiler implements all of the enhancements defined in the ANSI/ISO/IEC-8652: 1995 Ada 95 specification. These include object-oriented programming, hierarchical library organization, type extensions of tagged types and child library units, and new task and synchronization features such as protected types. The compiler implements three optional Ada 95 annexes: The System Programming Annex (C); The Real-Time Systems Annex (D); and the Numerics Annex (G). It also provides specialized VxWorks and POSIX support that enables Ada 95 tasks to be implemented as either VxWorks tasks or POSIX threads (for self-hosted Unix applications).

AdaMULTI's windowing editor features scroll bars, pull-down menus, and buttons for common commands. The editor is tightly integrated with AdaMULTI's source code navigator and cross-reference browser. It is also fully configurable, enabling users to change key bindings and alter object (such as scroll bars) behavior based on their application requirements.

AdaMULTI's call graphs display the call sequence (call trees) for each function. This can be done dynamically based on a particular program execution sequence, or statically, which gives programmers a more detailed call tree for all possible program paths.

AdaMULTI's source code navigation and cross reference browser make it easy for programmers to automatically search for and cross reference multiple source files for constructs such as types, declarations, and procedures.

AdaMULTI's run-time error checker detects memory leaks and common program faults such as array-out-of-bounds, storing vales into variables or bit fields that are too small to hold them, and attempting to access unallocated memory.

AdaMULTI's profiler helps programmers identify hot spots by providing program run-time data on a function by function and line by line basis.

AdaMULTI's project control System simplifies the design of large projects by providing automated build tools that eliminate the need for a make expert.

AdaMULTI's version control system augments the build tools by simplifying the management of revision levels and multiple project branches of project (i.e., developing two versions of software at the same time).

More on Green Hills Software

Incorporated in 1982, Green Hills Software, Inc., is a leading supplier of software development tools for 32- and 64-bit embedded systems. Green Hills Software offers a family of optimizing C, C++, Embedded C++, Ada 95, FORTRAN and Pascal compilers. The company's unique MULTI software development environment automates the compile-edit-build-debug cycle by integrating advanced facilities such as an RTOS-aware source-level debugger, performance profiler, program builder and version control system.

Green Hills Software's tools support all major 32-bit and 64-bit advanced microprocessor families and target environments, including instruction set simulators, ROM Monitors, commercial and home grown real-time operating systems (RTOS) and in-circuit emulators (ICE).

Green Hills Software is headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA., and has US offices in California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Florida. International headquarters are located in the United Kingdom, with offices in France, Germany, and the Netherlands. For sales information on Green Hills Software products, please call 1-805-965-6044 or email inquiries to sales@ghs.com.