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Case Studies
Athena Technologies Chooses VectorCAST for Software Testing
ADAHRS Certification Project
Athena Technologies, Inc., located in Warrenton VA, provides advanced hardware, software and controls solutions - from design through integration - for military and civilian unmanned and manned vehicle applications that demand the highest degree of reliability and robustness.
Their flight control and navigation systems feature fully integrated flight control systems and sensor suites that provide more performance, reliability, and capability in a smaller, lower power, and lower cost product. Athena is quickly becoming the standard in flight control and navigation across the aviation industry.
Athena is ISO 9001 certified, CMMI-III compliant, and follows the recommended procedures outlined by the Radio Technical Commission on Aeronautics in the development of their flight control and navigation products: DO-178B (software development), DO-160 (electrical system testing) and DO-254 (hardware design).
In 2007, Athena began certification of their commercial products, the Micro INSTM and SensorPac Air Data, Attitude, and Heading Reference System (ADAHRS). The ADAHRS will serve as a baseline for added features and functionality for the next generation.
Because the ADAHRS is required to be developed according to DO-178B Level B standards, the entire application had to be tested and proof had to be supplied that every line of code in the application was necessary.
Athena Technologies Chooses VectorCAST for Software Testing
Athena decided that automation was going to be critical to this project and felt that an automated unit-level testing package would be a time saver for creating tests.
"We gathered information from outside sources, received recommendations from the Green Hills web site as to tool partners, and had suggestions from our DERs. We also searched the web for DO178B Code Coverage tool sets." said Chris Brown, Athena's Vice President of Engineering.
Athena performed a survey of test tools in support of their requirements. They evaluated
several tools, including VectorCAST, which was recommended by their Green Hills FAE. VectorCAST
was chosen for unit, integration, and system testing of the ADAHRS.
- VectorCAST's integration with the Green Hills environment. Not only was there a long history of tight integration, but Vector Software's support and engineering personnel were very experienced with the Green Hills environment and had a good working relationship with the Green Hills support team in the event that issues needed to be resolved.
- USA-based development and support was very important due to the tight schedule and the need to get timely responses to issues that arose.
- VectorCAST support for Athena'ss software environment meant Athena could test their code on either their host or target environment as needed.
"We were impressed with Vector Software from the outset. VectorCAST provided excellent ease of use and functionality; good integration with the Green Hills MULTI environment; and there was an extensive network of embedded system developers using the VectorCAST test environment" added Chris.
VectorCAST was used at every level of testing (unit, integration and system) on the entire application.
The training was critical and consequently made the team immediately productive using the tool. They also were able to procure VectorCAST 3 months before testing was to begin, allowing the team to learn the tool, get it configured properly to run on their target, and set up some procedures that would make the testing run as smoothly as possible.
Testimonials
Marshall Aerospace Standardises on PRQA's Tools and VectorCAST/C, C++ and Gains DO178B Level C Accreditation
The following customer testimonial was provided by Centre Daily Times on January 7, 2009:
PRQA | Programming Research has announced that through the company's QA.C & MISRA Static Analysis Tools and VectorCast C/C++, Marshall Aerospace has obtained DO 178B Level C accreditation on its program for the Hercules C130 Aircraft.
Marshall Aerospace, a well-established provider of aerospace components, recently established a Technology Development group to further the company's capabilities into Hardware and Software development, producing innovative products for the aerospace and defence markets. After evaluating a number of suppliers and their products, for both Static Analysis and Testing, Marshall Aerospace chose Programming Research based on the cost effectiveness of its offerings and PRQA's experience in the Aerospace Industry. "We decided to adhere to all the rules within MISRA and the QA.C tool made this extremely easy to achieve. It has also meant that the bugs are identified and removed earlier in the life-cycle which has reduced the amount of testing and reworking we have had to do," commented Lee Jaques, Senior Software Engineer for Marshall Aerospace. Marshall Aerospace intends to extend the use of the tools on other projects and without any changes have the ability to provide products up to DO178B Level A Status. For additional information, please visit www.marshallaerospace.com.Honeywell Uses VectorCAST/Ada and VectorCAST/C for DO-178B and Military Avionics Testing
The following customer comments were provided by:
Honeywell ASCa Inc.
Honeywell Canada has successfully used VectorCAST as a standard for software quality and
testing for safety essential and critical applications on several commercial and defense
aerospace applications.
According to Wayne Young, Software Principal Engineer, Honeywell ASCa Inc., "VectorCAST is unique in
that it provides us with the ability to increase the reliability and quality of our flight software.
Commercial applications, such as the Boeing 777LR, and defense applications such as C5 and JSF have
benefited from the use of VectorCAST. It is the backbone of our unit test and software integration lab".
The Honeywell projects to date have relied on VectorCAST support for both the Ada and C languages.
Vector has also provided the necessary tool qualification documentation as is required by the FAA
for software certification.
Honeywell International is a $22 billion diversified technology and manufacturing leader,
serving customers worldwide with aerospace products and services; control technologies for
buildings, homes and industry; automotive products; turbochargers; specialty chemicals; fibers;
and electronic and advanced materials. Based in Morris Township, N.J., Honeywell is one of the
30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average and is also a component of the Standard
& Poor's 500 Index. For additional information, please visit www.honeywell.com
Lockheed Martin Uses Vector Software's VectorCAST/Ada for C130J DO-178B Testing
The following customer testimonial was provided by Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems (LMAS) in Marietta, GA as a result of their use of Vector Software's VectorCAST/Ada product on the C130J Hercules program. VectorCAST/Ada is used in the C-130J development process to build test drivers for unit level testing and FAA structural level testing.
Project Overview
The C130J program was an upgrade to the C130 aircraft originally built in the 1960's. VectorCAST/Ada was used on the Operational Flight Program development portion of the project. The development effort for this portion of the project consisted of approximately 220,000 lines of source code.
Project Overview
The reason that VectorCAST/Ada was chosen as compared to other test tools was due to the fact that AdaCAST was the only tool that would automatically allow access to all data and subprograms. AdaCAST also provided the flexibility of automatic test stub and driver creation needed to isolate individual software components. Vector provided specific tool enhancements as requested.
Successful use of VectorCAST/Ada was helped with the creation of job instructions specific to
project usage and the fact that the tool learning curve was as short as one day for basic tasks
and up to one week for project specific usage and techniques. Reports were also generated with
VectorCAST/Ada that provided consistent results that were easily audited by the FAA and the internal
Lockheed Martin QA organization. Approximately 98% of the application source code was tested with
VectorCAST/Ada. Although no hard cost saving metrics were generated comparing the use of VectorCAST/Ada
vs. testing with other tools or testing manually, "industry wide, 50% of a software budget is
used for FAA, level A, software structural testing. On the C130J program, 10% of the software budget
was used for structural testing" said Mark Hall, Lockheed Martin test consultant.
Summary
Vector Software was extremely helpful during development and provided immediate access to technical support. Enhancements requested were also provided and enabled efficient access to all data and subprograms normally not visible in an Ada development environment.
VectorCAST/Ada reduced the amount of time it took to complete the testing required by allowing us to focus on testing rather than on building the test code required to construct test harnesses, resulting in faster testing and faster integration.