Ada 2005 for Mission-Critical Systems

For the development of mission-critical software, the choice of programming language makes a significant difference in meeting the requirements of exacting safety standards and, ultimately, high-reliability applications. Ada has a long history of success in the safety-critical domain, with features such as strong typing, that help early error detection, and well-defined semantics. The language has evolved based on user experience, and the forthcoming Ada 2005 standard includes a number of enhancements that will be of particular benefit to developers of high-integrity real-time systems. Relevant features include support for run-time profiles, flexible task-dispatching policies, execution-time clocks and timers, and a unification of concurrency and object-oriented features.