ITHACA, N.Y., 28 Jan. 2008. Software developers at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) needed development and testing tools for high-assurance software. They found their solution from GrammaTech Inc. in Ithaca, N.Y.
GrammaTech won a $600,000 contract extension from NASA for developing advanced static-analysis technology to advance the state-of-the-art in static-analysis testing of high-assurance software, and to help NASA increase software reliability.
The technology came from work of the Laboratory for Reliable Software (LaRS) at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., which focuses on improving the reliability of mission-critical software.
In 2006, Gerard Holzmann, the LaRS technical lead, proposed 10 rules for developing safety-critical software -- a distillation of a large number of guidelines -- that most safety critical software-development projects can adopt as a base.
Holzmann's rules point out the importance of tool-based checks because it often is not feasible manually to review hundreds of thousands of lines of code in large applications. GrammaTech has a tool that automatically checks whether software adheres to Holzmann's rules.
For more information contact GrammaTech online at www.grammatech.com.
