Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Conference on High Integrity Language Technology, HILT '12, December 2-6, 2012, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Welcome to Boston and to HILT 2012, this year's annual international conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on the Ada Programming Language (SIGAda). HILT 2012 features a top-quality technical program focused on the issues associated with high integrity software -- where a failure could cause loss of human life or have other unacceptable consequences -- and on the solutions provided by language technology. "Language technology" here encompasses not only programming languages but also languages for expressing specifications, program properties, domain models, and other attributes of the software or the overall system. HILT 2012 consists of two days of tutorials, and three days of conference sessions. The tutorials cover a wide range of topics: designing for multitasking and multicore environments; leading-edge Ada verification technologies; contract-based programming and object-oriented programming in Ada 2012; safety of embedded software; Microsoft Research's Dafny automatic program verifier; Service-Oriented Architecture; and safety-critical Java. The conference program includes keynote presentations from internationally recognized experts: Kathleen Fisher (DARPA Information Innovation Office), on High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems (HACMS) / High-Assurance Vehicles; Nancy Leveson (MIT), on Challenges for Safety-Critical Software; Barbara Liskov (MIT), on Programming the Turing Machine; Greg Morrisett (Harvard Univ.), on Hardening Legacy C/C++ Code; and Guy L. Steele, Jr. (Oracle Labs), on Programming Language Life Cycles. HILT 2012 conference sessions deal with a range of topics associated with safe, secure and reliable software: analyzing and proving programs (program verification at compile time, advancing compilation technology); security and safety; real-time systems; and designing and implementing languages (compiler certification issues). You will learn the latest developments in software verification technologies, and hear industrial presentations from practitioners. The accompanying exhibits will give you the opportunity to meet vendors and find out about their latest offerings. Vendors include AdaCore (Platinum Level); Ellidiss, LDRA, Microsoft Research, and TASC (Silver Level); and MathWorks (Basic Level). At HILT 2012 you will learn about both the challenges confronting high integrity software and the solutions available to address them. Perhaps just as important are the social interactions that you get at a live conference: the chance to meet and talk with researchers and practitioners in industry, academia, and government, to ask them questions, and to explain your own work and interests. These renewed and new associations can be as valuable as the technical program at professional conferences, and their benefits will continue to reward you well after you return home.