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Welcome to the ISO home of Ada Standards


These pages are for use in the official business of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG9.


WG9 Organization


ISO and IEC

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) are the two primary organizations for international standardization. (A third organization, the International Telecommunications Union, ITU, is a treaty organization with the responsibility to make agreements among nations for telecommunications.)

Standards developed by WG9 are prepared for publication by the ISO Central Secretariat; they have a website with information helpful to standards developers.

To obtain an ISO standard, first consult the ISO catalog to make sure of the standard's number and the description. Then contact your national member body to order it. For example, in the U. S., it would be ordered from ANSI.


ISO/IEC JTC1

For some years, both ISO and IEC made standards that related to computing. In 1987, they resolved the problem of overlapping scope by forming a Joint Technical Committee, JTC1, to deal with all standardization in the scope of information technology.

All of the standards in WG9 are developed in accordance with the JTC1 Directives found at their web site. (The JTC1 Directives should not be confused with the ISO/IEC Directives.)


ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22

JTC1 deals with its large scope of work by subdividing the responsibility among a number of Subcommittees. SC22 is the one that deals with "programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces"; it is the parent body of WG9.


ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG9

In turn, SC22 subdivides its scope of work among several Working Groups. WG9 is the one given responsibility for "development of ISO standards for programming language Ada." WG9's projects must be approved by SC22 and JTC1. The convener of WG9 is Pat Rogers and the webmaster is Clyde Roby. The position of secretary is filled by volunteers, most recently by Clyde Roby.


WG's Rapporteur Groups

WG9 typically meets twice a year for a single day. Most of the work in drafting documents is prepared in Rapporteur Groups. Typically, an RG is assigned responsibility for one or more projects.

Ada Rapporteur Group (ARG)

Chair: Jeffrey Cousins
Duties: Language interpretations of Ada 95, Ada 2005, and 2012 comments and issues.
The ARG supports the Project Editors in the maintenance of ISO/IEC 8652, the Ada Language standard and ISO/IEC 18009, the Ada Conformity Assessment standard.
Minutes of all ARG meetings are available (the ARG procedures are also available as a text document and as a PostScript document on this website).

The scope of the ARG is defined by its charter.

Annex H Rapporteur Group (HRG)

Chair: Joyce Tokar
Duties: Guidance for Safety/Security applications in Ada.
The RG supports the Project Editor in developing ISO/IEC 15942

The scope of the HRG is defined by its charter.

ASIS Rapporteur Group (ASIS RG)

Chair: Bill Thomas
Duties: Maintenance and promotion of ASIS (Ada Semantic Interface Specification).
The RG supports the Project Editors in the maintenance of ISO/IEC 15291.
The RG works closely with the ACM SIGAda ASIS Working Group.

The scope of the ASIS RG is defined by the New Work Item for ISO/IEC 15291, contained in SC22 N1943 and WG9 N314: "Standardize the interface between an Ada environment as defined by ISO/IEC 8652:1995 and tools/applications requiring information from this environment."

Recently Discharged RGs

Several RGs have been discharged at the completion of their assigned work. These include the:


Liaisons to Other Standards Group and Organizations


Liaisons to Category C Groups


Related Organizations and Resources

There are many sources of information about Ada available from organizations and individuals throughout the world (see Liaisons above). Although none of these can be officially endorsed by ISO, IEC, or any of their subsidiary bodies, one of the primary starting places is:

Conformity assessment of Ada compilers is performed by third-party laboratories in cooperation with the Ada Conformity Assessment Authority.

A list of many Ada compilers for a wide range of platforms can also be found in the AdaIC's List of Validated Ada Compilers


Charter of the Ada Rapporteur Group (ARG)

Approved by WG9, 1 December 2017

The Ada Rapporteur Group (ARG) is a subgroup of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 22/WG 9, the JTC 1 Working Group for Ada. The ARG has the following duties:

Language proposals originating in other Rapporteur Groups of WG 9 will be referred to the ARG for disposition in the same manner as suggestions originating outside of WG 9.


Charter of the Annex H Rapporteur Group (HRG)

Approved by WG9, 28 April 1995

The HRG will synthesize the essential requirements of typical sector-specific standards for high integrity applications which have a bearing on Ada and its supporting tools. Guidance, including interpretation and amplification of Annex H will be developed for users, implementers, evaluators and certifiers. The guidance produced will be in a form suitable for reference in procurement.

Sector-specific standards to be considered are such as:

The HRG will undertake the following activities:

Annex H Issues

The HRG will produce and maintain an interpretations document.

The HRG will investigate pragma enhancement, such as additional parameters for restriction pragmas and additional pragmas.

The HRG will provide implementation advice, covering areas such as compilation and validation.

Taxonomy of Techniques

The HRG will produce a taxonomy of techniques for the construction and analysis of high integrity software, such as:

Language Issues

The HRG will investigate the interaction of language issues with high integrity requirements, such as:

Bindings and Interfaces

The HRG will support the interoperation of high integrity software and tools with other systems, such as:


Important Disclaimer


Last update 6 December 2017; please email comments about this page to Clyde Roby at [email protected]