News

Ada joins Java as Aonix joins Eclipse

• By Rich Seeley
• June 15, 2004

While many Java toolmakers are members of Eclipse, which bills itself as 'a community committed to the implementation of a universal platform for tools integration,' the newest member is also bringing Ada.

Aonix, an international company with headquarters in San Diego and Paris, also makes Java tools, but it is porting its Ada95 tool suite to the Eclipse platform, said Jacques Brygier, the firm's vice president of marketing.

Developed in the late 1970s for the U.S. Department of Defense, which was seeking to bring standardization to the Pentagon's various programming projects then thought to be using 450 different languages, Ada survives in areas ranging from academics to avionics.

'Ada is still quite well-used,' Brygier told JDT via cell phone from France. Two industries where Aonix sells tools, aeronautics and transportation, are still bastions for Ada programmers. One of his company's specialties is development tools for applications such as aviation controls and computerized braking systems where failure is not an option, he explained.

Whether they are written in Ada or Java, Aonix plans to deliver an Eclipse-based IDE targeted at developers of those mission- and safety-critical applications, Brygier said. Much of this work is done in embedded systems, and developers are seeking a common platform where they can select tools from various vendors and be confident that they will interoperate, he said. Aonix shares the Eclipse community's commitment to standards for interoperability, he added.

Mike Milinkovich, the newly appointed Eclipse executive director, welcomed the newest member, stating that Aonix's 'support for Eclipse affirms the benefits of a universal platform in delivering mission- and safety-critical tools.'

More information on Aonix is available at http://www.aonix.com. More information on Eclipse is available at http://www.eclipse.org .

A brief history of Ada is available at http://www.engin.umd.umich.edu/CIS/course.des/cis400/ada/ada.html .