[GAP] GAP e-newletter

[Kathryn Fairlamb]

A Happy New Year to you all!

AdaCore is please to present the first GAP e-newsletter!

Planned for release on a twice-yearly basis, the aim of the newsletter 
is to provide GAP members with a concise summary of new GAP tools and 
features, highlight recent and upcoming academically-oriented events, 
and share tips in order to help you and your students benefit as much as 
possible from the products and services available through the program.

Happy reading!

The AdaCore Team

*********************************************
CONTENTS

Ada 2005 uptake in the GAP community
Next GNAT GPL release 2007
Ada Intern Program update
'Programming in Ada 2005', by John Barnes - 10% discount on further orders
Coming soon -  Ada 2005 Jewel of the Week!
Upcoming events
Spotlight on the University of Northern Iowa
New members

***
ADA 2005 UPTAKE IN THE GAP COMMUNITY

One of the most exciting developments in 2006 was the arrival of the new 
revision of the language, Ada 2005. The current GNAT GPL version 
available for GAP members enables professors and students to benefit 
from almost all of the new features introduced in Ada 2005, including 
improvements to the Object Oriented model, more flexible access types, 
enhanced structure and sisibility control, Real-Time Annex-D 
improvements (including the Ravenscar profile),  improvements to 
exceptions, numerics and generics, and extensions to the standard library.

Several GAP members have already integrated elements of the new language 
revision in their courses. Among them are:
Naval Postgraduate School, USA (Programming Paradigms class);
Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain (Real-Time Systems course);
University of Northern Iowa, USA (Data Structures course);
University of Padua, Italy, (some Master-level projects);
University of Sydney, Australia (Real-Time Computing course).

Feel free to share your Ada 2005 teaching experiences with the GAP 
community at any time via the GAP discussion list at gap at adacore.info

***
NEXT GNAT GPL RELEASE 2007

You can look forward to the new GNAT GPL release later this year, 
incorporating even more Ada 2005 features. The exact date is yet to be 
fixed, but is sure to happen before the summer, in order to give you 
plenty of time to update your courses for the next academic year.

***
ADA INTERN PROGRAM UPDATE

Signing up for the Ada Intern Program will soon be available to your 
students when they download the GNAT GPL Edition via the Libre site at 
https://libre2.adacore.com/. Participation in this program, whose 
purpose is to bring together Ada knowledgeable students and AdaCore 
customers searching for Ada knowledgeable interns, is currently reserved 
for teachers only on behalf of their students, via GNAT Tracker. We hope 
that the new framework will encourage students to be more proactive in 
targeting Ada specific projects in their search for qualitative work 
experience.

Look for an announcement of this new student service in February 2007.

***
PROGRAMMING IN ADA 2005, by John Barnes - 10% DISCOUNT ON FURTHER ORDERS

AdaCore was very happy to be able to offer each GAP member a free copy 
of the latest updated edition of John Barnes's highly successful 
'Programming in Ada' series, titled (unsurprisingly yet accurately!) 
'Programming in Ada 2005'.

Now, GAP members and Ada students can continue to benefit from discount 
prices on further copies of the book by following the link from the 
Academic homepage on the AdaCore website at 
http://www.adacore.com/home/academia/. If you are a new GAP member and 
have not received your free copy, please contact AdaCore at 
gap-contact at adacore.com.

Note that a range of books, teaching materials and lab materials are 
available for download free of charge, courtesy of their authors, from 
the "Contributions" page of GNAT Tracker.

***
COMING SOON - ADA 2005 JEWEL OF THE WEEK!

We plan to launch in January, via the GAP discussion list at 
gap at adacore.info, a series of weekly tips on how to discover the 
multitude of hidden jewels in Ada 2005. These gems, initially offered by 
AdaCore experts, will aim to cover a range of subjects such as the 
limited_with clause, mutually recursive types, interfaces, anonymous 
access types, and the containers library.

Do not hesitate to share your own Ada gems with other members of the GAP 
community via the discussion list.

***
UPCOMING EVENTS

Below are the forthcoming academia-oriented events which AdaCore intends 
to support. Please let your fellow GAP members know, via the Discussion 
List at gap at adacore.info, if you are planning to attend and/or present a 
paper at any of the following:

SIGCSE, March 7-10, 2007, Kentucky, USA
http://www.cs.potsdam.edu/sigcse07/index.shtml
Following the success of last year's event (1200 attendees!), AdaCore 
will again be exhibiting at this event.

Ada Europe, June 25-29, 2007, Geneva, Switzerland
Last year's event in Porto, Portugal was very well attended by the GAP 
community, as well as by AdaCore staff! AdaCore will again be actively 
participating in this year's event, a cornerstone in the Ada community 
calendar.

We look forward to seeing you there!

***
SPOTLIGHT ON .... THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWA

In each newsletter, we intend to place a different GAP member in the 
spotlight and show how and why Ada is being used for teaching purposes 
in universities around the world. In this first edition, the spotlight 
is on the University of Northern Iowa, and the Department of Prof. John 
McCormick.

Signing up for GAP was a natural decision for UNI and for Prof. 
McCormick, since he has been using Ada and GNAT in Computer Science 
courses there since 1997. GNAT was first selected for an upper-division 
course on concurrent programming, where it was enthusiatically embraced 
by students and faculty. GNAT and Ada are currently being used in a 
traditional data structures course, and will likely be adopted in a 
fundamentals course that focuses on software engineering.

"The GAP toolset is installed on all computers in our public 
laboratories. It is used in our CS3 (Data Structures) couse and by 
students who have a choice of programming language in other courses. 
Students commonly use Ada/GAP in Algorithms and Operating Systems."

***
NEW MEMBERS!!

And finally, 2006 saw a continued steady growth of the GAP community, 
which currently stands at 140 members, from 121 schools and universities 
in 25 countries. A particular welcome to our newest members:

California Polytechnic State University, CA, USA
Carroll College, WI, USA
Cranfield University, United Kingdom
ENST Bretagne, France
George Mason University, VA, USA
Indiana Wesleyan University, IN, USA
James Madison University, VA, USA
Lenoir-Rhyne College, NC, USA
Nanyang Technological University, Republic of Singapore
Poznan University of Technology, Poland
Rosenheim University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Rochester Institute of Technology, NY, USA
St. Thomas University, FL, USA
Texas A&M, TX, USA
Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Germany
Truman State University, MO, USA
University of Alaska, AK, USA
University of Bari, Italy
University of Idaho, ID, USA
University of Illinois at Springfield, IL, USA
University of Maryland, MD, USA
University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
University of Zielona Gora, Poland
UPMF-IUT2, Grenoble
Voronezh State University, Russian Federation

***********************************************************************