Streamlined checking process produces high-quality code in record time

With a more than 40‑year track record for delivering automated code testing and software safety analysis products, LDRA’s modular tool suite is used by Richland Technologies to gain early insight into potentially exploitable safety and security vulnerabilities in software source code.

Headquartered in Lawrenceville, Georgia, Richland Technologies specialises in avionics computing platforms, cockpit displays, and advanced vision system development. The company’s services include safety engineering as well as design, implementation, verification, and validation to meet DO‑178C (software) and DO-254 (hardware) standards. Richland Technologies engineers use the LDRA tool suite for static analysis, unit testing, low-level verification, and structural coverage analysis of the embedded software for advanced applications such as vision systems and inertial measurement units used in standby instrument systems.

“As design cyles got shorter and designs more complex, we wanted to make sure we were using the very best tools on the market and so embarked on a rigorous test of all software testing and certification products,” said Robert Atkinson, Sales and Marketing Executive, Richland Technologies. “The LDRA tool suite came out on top in our evaluation of low-level verification tools for target computer systems, and we have been using it successfully for almost three years now. We are currently looking at implementing even more of the modules in the LDRA tool suite as our business grows.”

Once the engineers at Richland Technologies selected the LDRA tool suite, they needed to come up to speed quickly to begin verifying designs on extremely tight schedules. They relied on the LDRA support team to help them learn the tools and integrate them with the target embedded systems.

“With most complex tool suites, it takes days to get set up using a combination of instruction manuals and the tool provider’s technical support,” said Stephen Spence, Senior Avionics Software Engineer, Richland Technologies. “Set-up almost always takes a lot longer than you expect, but with the LDRA tool suite it took less time than we expected because we had a skilled technical support engineer there to resolve any issues quickly.”

“The LDRA tools automate the part of software engineering that everyone hates — the mundane, repetitive verification tasks,” Spence added. “An engineer often has to go over thousands of lines of code to ensure compliance to coding standards such as MISRA (Motor Industry Software Reliability Association). The LDRA tool suite finds 99 per cent of coding standard violations and reduces verification time from days to a few minutes.”

At Richland Technologies, designs must adhere to the strict requirements-driven processes mandated by the DO-178C and DO-254 standards for the development of commercial airborne electronic systems. The LDRA tool suite and documentation are well matched to safety-critical design flows and in-house methodologies that help developers to achieve standards certification in much shorter timeframes. Features of particular importance to Richland Technologies include:

• Well-organised web-page-based output highlighting code coverage and static analysis results achieved during low-level verification
• Rapid regression analysis
• Structural coverage results
• Robust static analysis capability
• Extensive unit tests
• Easy integration into the DO-178C design flow
• Support for remote collaboration on designs with end customers