Building High Integrity Applications With Spark

Software is pervasive in our lives. We are accustomed to dealing with the failures of much of that software - restarting an application is a very familiar solution. Such solutions are unacceptable when the software controls our cars, airplanes and medical devices or manages our private information. These applications must run without error. SPARK provides a means, based on mathematical proof, to guarantee that a program has no errors. SPARK is a formally defined programming language and a set of verification tools specifically designed to support the development of software used in high integrity applications. Using SPARK, developers can formally verify properties of their code such as information flow, freedom from runtime errors, functional correctness, security properties and safety properties. Written by two SPARK experts, this is the first introduction to the just-released 2014 version. It will help students and developers alike master the basic concepts for building systems with SPARK.

John McCormick is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Northern Iowa. He began his career at the State University of New York in 1979. He has served as secretary, treasurer and chair of the Association for Computer Machinery Special Interest Group on Ada. In 1993 John was awarded the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. He received the Special Interest Group on Ada Distinguished Service Award in 2002, as well as the Outstanding Ada Community Contributions Award in 2008. His additional awards include the Special Interest Group on Ada Best Paper and Presentation Award, and the Ada Europe Best Presentation Award.

Peter Chapin is a Professor of Computer Information Systems at Vermont Technical College (VTC). Peter started at VTC in 1986 as an instructor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology department teaching courses on microcontrollers and C programming. Since 2009 Peter has been Software Director of VTC's CubeSat Laboratory where he has worked with students using Ada and SPARK to program small scale nano-satellites. VTC successfully launched a working CubeSat satellite into low Earth orbit on November 19, 2013. It is the first CubeSat programmed using SPARK.