Introduction to ADA 2012

This course is for developers who already know Ada 95 and want to learn about the new possibilities brought by Ada 2005 and Ada 2012.

Ada 2012 is since December 15, 2012 the only officially standardized version of the language. Concretely, it is a revision of the Ada 95 standard, augmented by the improvements of Ada 2005, which brings new functionalities corresponding to the evolution of the state of the art in computer science. Compilers have already started to implement new features.

Table of contents

• Rationale for Ada 2012: Introduction
• Scope of revision
• Expressions
• Structure and visibility
• Tasking and real-time facilities
• General improvements
• Standard library
• Conclusions

Ada has evolved over a number of years and, especially for those unfamiliar with the background, it is convenient to summarize the processes involved. The first version was Ada 83 and this was developed by a team led by the late Jean Ichbiah and funded by the USDoD. The development of Ada 95 from Ada 83 was an extensive process also 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 leadership of Tucker Taft.

Then came Ada 2005 and this was developed on a more modest scale. The work was almost entirely done by voluntary effort with support from within the industry itself through bodies such as the Ada Resource Association and Ada-Europe.
After some experience with Ada 2005 it became clear that some further evolution was appropriate. Adding new features as in Ada 2005 always brings some surprises regarding their use and further polishing is almost inevitable. Accordingly, it was decided that a further revision should be made with a goal of completion in 2012.