Proceedings of the 2011 ACM annual international conference on Special interest group on the ada programming language

Abstract

Welcome to the 2011 Annual International Conference of the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM's) Special Interest Group on the Ada Programming Language (SIGAda), being held in Denver, Colorado, in the heart of the western United States. We offer you a conference featuring a top-quality technical program focused on important strengths of Ada: safety, security, distributed, real-time, and embedded systems. The visions of these systems reflected in Ada's original requirements in the 1970s have expanded in almost unimaginable ways with the Ada 95 and Ada 2005 implementations, and continue to be objects of envy by those in the programming language community who understand what the strengths of a language bring to implementers in terms of safety, security efficiency, reliability, and effectiveness. Software challenges remain dominant in these domains with rapid hardware advances. Most other languages fail to meet the needs identified as far back as the 1978 Steelman, being able at best to do only 3/4 of the needed functions, while Ada performs over 95%. Ada's track record of safety, security, reliability, efficiency, robustness and all-around success is unparalleled at solving safety/security critical, real-time and/or distributed system challenges. Ada is used in air traffic control systems, space/satellite systems, most modern jetliner avionics, high-speed ground transportation systems, and battle automation systems. As such, it is an important part of the world's economies, transportation, and defenses. Three days of technical papers, keynotes, and invited presentations will report how these successes are achieved and where remaining issues are leading. We are fortunate to have leaders in the software engineering community to provide keynote addresses to set the tone for our conference. Beyond the formal conference of selected papers and presentations, SIGAda 2011 also offers workshops and tutorials with the same duality of on-theme and complementary topics. SIGAda's tutorials provide full-day or halfdays on selected topics to enhance one's professional development. SIGAda's workshops allow those working related issues to share with each other and leverage everyone's accomplishments; workshop products are "delivered" to the community. The broad offerings of career-enhancing tutorials include basic Ada language introductions for software engineers new to Ada, intermediate and advanced Ada topics for practitioners striving to expand their Ada expertise, and several language-independent technology topics. These topics are often coupled with Ada technology because only Ada's full and complete definition allows one to indicate what is expected, and to show that it can be achieved. Join us in understanding how these topics mutually support the disciplined development and evolution of serious, high quality software systems. Finally, we hope SIGAda 2011 provides you an outstanding opportunity for rewarding affiliation with colleagues in industry, academia, and government --- discussions "in the hall," informal meal-time meetings, and even during the more relaxed moments we make for socializing. These associations can be as valuable as the technical program at professional conferences, and often extend the experience after you return home.