Thomas Østerlie and Ståle Dahl review AdaTEST, a full service tool for formal testing needs, in this online article at Linux Journal . . .

“The increased adoption of embedded Linux within the general consumer electronics market gives rise to new areas of application development for embedded Linux outside the usual realm of PDAs and mobile phones. Industries such as avionics, railway signaling, process control and medicine are all users of embedded systems. Common to them all is a need for safety-critical software. Safety-critical software is a class of systems whose failure may cause injury or death to human beings. In addition to real-time requirements, including proper control over timing and scheduling, such systems have absolute demands regarding correctness of behavior . . .”

“Strict formal methods are applied in developing safety-critical software. Counted among these methods are various forms of testing . . . “

“One such testing tool AdaTEST, from the British company IPL. AdaTEST is, of course, a tool for testing Ada software. It has been audited and found qualified for use on projects complying with the RTCA's DO-178B, an international safety standard for the avionics industry. AdaTEST therefore can be used for developing safety-critical systems. However, a pertinent question arises: AdaTEST is designed for testing software written in Ada; with the power of C at hand, why bother with programming Ada for the Linux platform? . . . “

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