From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,42427d0d1bf647b1 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Ada Core Technologies and Ada95 Standards Date: 1996/04/04 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 145760537 references: <00001a73+00002c20@msn.com> <828038680.5631@assen.demon.co.uk> <828127251.85@assen.demon.co.uk> <315FD5C9.342F@lfwc.lockheed.com> <3160EFBF.BF9@lfwc.lockheed.com> <828475321.18492@assen.demon.co.uk> <31623F5E.4EAE@lfwc.lockheed.com> organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-04-04T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Ken Garlington says: 1. The ACVC is not an adequate standard of proof, because of inherent limitations of a general certification test suite. I'm not sure I fully accept that rationale, but as we've already agreed, you're far more knowledgeable of the ACVC than I, so I'll have to bow to your expertise. Ken, it continues to worry me that you could possibly think that a set of black box tests (no code coverage testing, no path testing) could possibly be sufficient as proof at any high level of assurance of a complex program. Surely you do not mean to tell me that safety critical programs that you write are tested only to this extent (or for that matter that these programs trust the compiler!) 2. The real standard of proof should come from the actions of the individual vendors. In particular, you said that GNAT has a development and test process, and that this process was probably common to other vendors. I requested a description of this process. Is this an unreasonable demand from potential customers like Mr. McCabe and myself? I know that any potential customer can ask for my company's process at any time (in fact, we have booths at conferences like the Software Technology Conference _promoting_ our process). We have described our process in a number of forums. It is a long story which I am not about to post here! In short we have an extensive test suite that we run every night and before any modification to the system occurs, but there is much more to the story than that. If you are indeed a serious potential customer for GNAT, contact support@gnat.com. (or stop by our booth at STC!)