Readers will recall that the development of Ada 95 from Ada 83 was an extensive process funded by the USDoD. Formal requirements were established after comprehensive surveys of user needs and competitive proposals were then submitted resulting in the selection of Intermetrics as the developer under the devoted leadership of Tucker Taft. The whole technical development process was then comprehensively monitored by a distinct body of Distinguished Reviewers. Of course, the process was also monitored by the ISO committee concerned and the new language finally became an ISO standard in 1995.

The development of Ada 2005 from Ada 95 has been (and continues to be) on a more modest scale. The work has almost entirely been by voluntary effort with support from within the industry itself through bodies such as the Ada Resource Association and Ada-Europe.

The development is being performed under the guidance of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 WG9 (hereinafter just called WG9) chaired adroitly by James Moore whose deep knowledge leads us safely through the minefield of ISO procedures. This committee has included national representatives of many nations including Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. WG9 developed guidelines [1] for a revision to Ada 95 which were then used by the Ada Rapporteur Group (the ARG) in drafting the revised standard.

The ARG is a team of experts nominated by the national bodies represented on WG9 and the two liaison organizations, ACM SIGAda and Ada-Europe. The ARG was originally led with Teutonic precision by Erhard Plödereder and is currently led with Transalpine Gallic flair by Pascal Leroy. The editor, who at the end of the day actually writes the words of the standard, is the indefatigable Randy (fingers) Brukardt.

Suggestions for the revised standard have come from a number of sources such as individuals on the ARG, national bodies on WG9, users via email discussions on Ada-Comment and so on.

At the time of writing (June 2005), the revision process is essentially finished. The details of all individual changes are now clear and they have been integrated to form a new version of the Annotated Ada Reference Manual. This is currently being reviewed and the final approved standard should emerge in the first half of 2006.

There has been much discussion on whether the language should be called Ada 2005 or Ada 2006. For various reasons the WG9 meeting in York in June 2005 decided that the vernacular name should be Ada 2005.

© 2005, 2006 John Barnes Informatics.

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