DDC-I, a leading supplier of software and professional services for mission- and safety-critical applications, and Vector Software, a leading provider of automated software testing solutions for safety- and business-critical embedded applications, today announced the availability of the VectorCAST test automation platform for DDC-I's Deos safety-critical real-time operating system and OpenArbor integrated development environment. The integrated platform greatly reduces the time and cost associated with developing, testing, and certifying DO-178 safety-critical application software.

"We're excited to be working with Vector to offer their world-class test automation tools for our safety-critical RTOS," said Greg Rose, vice president of marketing and product management at DDC-I. "The integration of our RTOS and tools with Vector's test automation suite addresses all aspects of development, test and certification for DO-178 safety-critical applications."

"We are pleased to support DDC-I's Deos RTOS with the VectorCAST test automation platform," said Jeffrey Fortin, head of product management for Vector Software. "The integration, along with both companies' DO-178 expertise, provides customers with a complete solution for a more efficient certification process."

VectorCAST is a dynamic software test solution that automates C/C++ and Ada unit and integration testing, which is necessary for validating safety- and mission-critical embedded systems. VectorCAST automates the creation of stubs and drivers as part of the creation of the test harness, normally a manual process, giving developers time to focus on building thorough, high-quality test cases. With VectorCAST, unit testing can be done natively or on a specific target or simulator. The VectorCAST Runtime Support Package (RSP) provides a full-featured integration that allows for download, execution and results capture using the built-in networking facilities of the Deo's RTOS.

Deos is a safety-critical embedded RTOS that has been certified to DO-178 DAL A since 1998. Featuring deterministic real-time response, the time- and space- partitioned RTOS employs patented slack scheduling to deliver higher CPU utilization than any other certifiable safety-critical COTS RTOS. Deos is built from the ground up for safety-critical applications, and is the only certifiable time- and space-partitioned COTS RTOS that has been created using RTCA DO-178, Level A processes from the very first day of its product development. Deos provides the easiest, lowest cost path of any COTS RTOS to DO-178 Level A certification, the highest level of safety criticality.

Development support for Deos includes DDC-I's Eclipse-based, mixed-language OpenArbor IDE, which features Ada, C and C++ optimizing compilers, a color-coded source editor, project management support, automated build utilities, and a symbolic debugger. Also included is a virtual target hardware development tool, QEMU (Quick EMUlator), which allows developers to develop, debug and test their code on their development host PC in advance of actual target hardware availability.