Liverpool Data Research Associates

Liverpool Data Research Associates (LDRA)
Type Privately held company
Industry Software testing
Founded 1975
Headquarters Wirral Peninsula, England
Key people Professor Michael Hennell, CEO
Products LDRA Testbed, TBrun, TBreq, TBvision, & others
Website http://www.ldra.com

Liverpool Data Research Associates (LDRA) is a provider of software analysis, test and requirements traceability tools for the Public and Private sectors and a pioneer in static and dynamic software analysis.

Contents

History

LDRA was founded in 1975 by Professor Michael Hennell to commercialize a software test-bed created to perform quality assessments on the mathematical libraries on which his Nuclear physics research at the University of Liverpool depended.[1][2]

Products

LDRA Testbed is a proprietary software analysis tool providing static code analysis, and also provides code coverage analysis, code, quality, and design reviews. It is a commercial implementation of the software test-bed created by Hennell as part of his university research. It was the first commercial product to include support for the Linear Code Sequence and Jump software analysis method, which resulted from the same research. It is used primarily where software is required to be reliable, rugged, and as error free as possible, such as in safety critical aerospace electronics (or Avionics).[3] It has also been used in the detection and removal of security vulnerabilities.[4] LDRA Testbed is a part of a tool suite from LDRA, including:

Industry Standards

LDRA is a contributor to several industry standards, including DO-178C[5], MISRA C[6] and MISRA C++[7]. Additionally, LDRA is an Industry Partner[8] for the CERT C Secure Coding Standard[9] produced by the Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute.

References

  1. ^ M. A. Hennell, An experimental testbed for numerical software. {I}. {Fortran}, The Computer Journal 21(4):333--336, @nov, 1978
  2. ^ M. A. Hennell and D. Hedley, An experimental testbed for numerical software. {II}. {ALGOL 68}, The Computer Journal 22(1):53--56, @feb, 1979
  3. ^ John Binder, Testing software: The new frontier, Aerospace America, June 2005, pp 30 - 31
  4. ^ Jay-Evan J. Tevis, John A. Hamilton, Methods for the prevention, detection and removal of software security vulnerabilities, Proceedings of the 42nd ACM annual Southeast regional conference, pp 197 - 202, Huntsville, Alabama, 2004, ISBN 1-58113-870-9
  5. ^ Minutes of the 11th Joint Meeting, Joint EUROCAE Working Group 71 and RTCA Special Committee 205, SOFTWARE CONSIDERATIONS IN AERONAUTICAL SYSTEMS Hartford, Connecticut June 22, 2009 to June 26, 2009 (http://www.rtca.org/CMS_DOC/205sum11ja-0906.pdf)
  6. ^ MISRA - The Motor Industry Software Reliability Association - MISRA C, http://www.misra-c2.com
  7. ^ MISRA - The Motor Industry Software Reliability Association - MISRA C ++, http://www.misra-cpp.org
  8. ^ CERT Research Annual Report 2008, SEI Communications, Executive Editor Richard Linger
  9. ^ CERT C Secure Coding Standard, The, Robert C. Seacord, Oct 14, 2008, Addison-Wesley Professional, ISBN 0-321-56321-2.