This research will address some key technical problems that will need to be resolved before proceeding with full-scale commercial development of a comprehensive and flexible set of Ada program quality-enhancing tools, the Ada Quality Toolset (AQT). These tools will support Ada program developers by checking, and where appropriate, enforcing, a set of Ada programming style guidelines. A Phase I research project has demonstrated the feasibility of supporting a wide range of guidelines, and has defined usage modes, user interfaces and outline architecture for a toolset. The Phase II research will focus on three main areas: o Design of toolset components and processing functions, with exploratory prototyping to resolve difficult technical issues where appropriate and necessary. o Prototype implementation of a toolset with sufficient fuctionality to demonstrate that a full commercial toolset can be implemented, and to allow evaluation of usability and utility. o Experimental evaluation of the usability and utility of the prototype toolset. Design and implemenation of a prototype toolset will require the solution to a number of technical problems. If these problems can be solved, and the prototype toolset proves to be both usable and useful, the feasibility and desirability of proceeding with full scale commerical development of AQT will be fully demonstrated.
