LDRA Adds Java Language and Certification Support

Although mature Java device-level capabilities have been available for some time now, a lack of guidance on how to certify Java has caused companies to avoid using it in critical applications. With the imminent ratification of DO-178C, LDRA is ensuring that its customers can leverage Java’s advantages as a development language and effectively incorporate Java support into certification-ready systems. Developers typically use Java for the communication, networking and user interfaces of complex critical applications. Being able to extend the LDRA tool suite across the entire application will reduce the challenges of tool integration and learning other testing tools.

“LDRA plays a leading role in developing better quality software by participating on the committees of standards and certification organizations,” noted Ian Hennell, LDRA Operations Director. “With Java now incorporated into a host of applications whether ground-based control systems for avionics, the networking plane of a Cisco router, or the user interface of a medical device, it is essential to have a process that ensures customers can certify their Java software components. Extending the LDRA tool suite to analyze, test and verify Java components is a natural extension of LDRA’s long-standing expertise in certification. This ensures that our customers gain additional flexibility in a seamless environment regardless of the language they need.”

The LDRA tool suite benefits from over thirty years of cutting-edge research and development. Java, like all programming languages, is implemented differently by each compiler. These differences can be extremely problematic for certification, particularly at higher levels where it is essential to know that each piece of code does exactly what’s expected. By using smart parsing technology, the LDRA tool suite adapts to the syntax of each compiler dialect, ensuring that LDRA parsers can without modification successfully parse widely different syntaxes. This superior capability enables LDRA to provide the broadest standard and language support in the industry.

Support for Java will be first introduced into the LDRA tool suite via LDRA Testbed, LDRA’s static and dynamic analysis engine, TBrun, the automated unit testing engine, and TBvision, the management and reporting module.