NEW YORK, PARIS, and BATH, England, October 6, 2009 – The launch of a new, General Public License (GPL) version of SPARK brings a professional-grade toolset for high-assurance and safety-critical software development to the academic community and developers of Free Software. This aims to drive the use of high assurance programming techniques and tools by a larger percentage of the overall software development community.
The release of SPARK GPL completes the strategic shift that sees the once proprietary SPARK technology now a part of the Freely Licensed Open Source Software (FLOSS) ecosystem.
SPARK was created by Praxis, the international specialist in critical systems engineering and safety assurance, and AdaCore, the leading provider of commercial software solutions for the Ada language. SPARK provides the foremost language, toolset and design discipline for the engineering of high-assurance software. It combines the renowned SPARK language and verification tools from Praxis, with the GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) and GNATbench development environments from AdaCore.
SPARK GPL Edition allows students and the Free Software community to develop using the toolset under the terms of the GPL. Academic faculty using SPARK in teaching and research can download the software under AdaCore’s GAP program. A professional version – SPARK Pro – is globally available from AdaCore. Launched in March 2009, SPARK Pro includes full support and is aimed at professional developers of high assurance systems.
SPARK GPL is rapidly expanding the SPARK development community. Over 1,700 downloads of the technology have taken place from an estimated 700 individuals since the launch of the GPL Edition.
SPARK has a distinguished track-record in the development of high-assurance systems. These include the Tokeneer project developed by Praxis for the US National Security Agency (NSA) using SPARK and AdaCore’s GNAT technology. SPARK GPL complements Tokeneer, which provides a freely downloadable demonstration of the SPARK technology.
“SPARK has a long and distinguished industrial pedigree being used for large-scale critical development systems all over the world. This pedigree, and the research that has enabled it, is now freely available, and I look forward to seeing the research advances and innovations that will result,” said Keith Williams, Praxis Managing Director. “It is also very important that the academic community now has access to such industrial-strength material to support the teaching of high-integrity software engineering.”
Developed by Praxis, SPARK is a language specifically designed to support the development of software used in applications where correct operation is vital either for reasons of safety or security. The SPARK toolset offers static verification that is unrivalled in terms of its soundness, low false-alarm rate, depth and efficiency. The toolset also generates evidence for correctness that can be used to build a constructive assurance case in line with the requirements of industry regulators and certification schemes. There are versions of SPARK based on Ada 83, Ada 95, and Ada 2005, so all leading Ada compilers and tools work out-of-the-box with SPARK.
“AdaCore is committed to the Free Software community, and the launch of SPARK GPL will widen the scope and range of tools available to students and developers interested in learning how to build high assurance applications,” said Robert Dewar, CEO and President, AdaCore. “By making SPARK available to the academic and research community, we hope to stimulate work in improving approaches to developing safety- and security-critical systems.”
The SPARK GPL release includes:
· The SPARK Language Definition
· Full SPARK Toolset, including RavenSPARK, Examiner, Simplifier and Checker
· Integration with the latest version of AdaCore’s GPS and GNATBench IDEs
· Tutorial material for SPARK GPL, included in the accompanying release of the Tokeneer Discovery package
· Availability of full sources for all the tools
Webinar
A joint webinar between AdaCore and Praxis, providing an introduction and demonstration of SPARK GPL, will be held on October 13, 2009. Academics and Free Software developers are encouraged to participate. It will begin at 5pm European Daylight Time/4pm GMT Daylight Time/11am Eastern Daylight Time/8am Pacific Daylight Time. To register please visit:
www.adacore.com/home/products/gnatpro/webinars/
About Praxis
Praxis is a systems engineering company specialising in safety and mission critical applications. Praxis leads the world in specific areas of advanced systems engineering such as: ultra low defect software engineering, safety engineering for complex or novel systems, and tools/methods for systems engineering. Praxis offers clients a range of services including turnkey systems development, consultancy, training and R&D. Key market sectors are Aerospace, Defence, Air Traffic Management, Railways and Nuclear. The company operates internationally with active projects in the US, Asia and Europe. The headquarters of Praxis are in Bath (UK) with offices also in London, Loughborough and Paris. It is wholly owned by Altran Technologies which is a global leader in innovation engineering and employs 18, 500 staff across the world. www.praxis-his.com
About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, the 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 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.
AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com