Rational Software Corp yesterday extended its support for the Unix environment with the launch of a new set of tools that the company says will give developers more flexibility than before. The California-based software vendor has released Rational Apex 3.0, an integrated programming environment that is designed to simplify the process of building and managing Ada and mixed language Ada and C++ applications on Unix computers. Pamela Roussos, the company’s VP marketing said this was the first time Rational had offered a development environment for the Ada programming language. Previously, it offered only C and C++ tools for Unix, she said. Ada is used to write applications in mission- critical environments; typically the embedded system software that runs the safety systems of things such as cruise missiles and plane cockpits. Roussos added that Rational has integrated its Purify Apex, Quantify Apex and PureCoverage Apex within the Ada development environment. The former are special tools that detect application errors, performance bottlenecks and code coverage analysis. She said that improving integration would help free up time for developers to concentrate on designing, developing and testing the functionality of their code and improving the quality of their applications.
