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Rational ASIS: Ada Semantic Interface Specification

This online reference describes the ASIS standard version 1.1.0 and Rational ASIS, Rational's implementation of ASIS. It describes the packages, subprograms, and types available in Rational ASIS and how to use them to programmatically extract semantic and syntactic information from compiled Ada programs.

This introduction includes (click on a topic to see it):


About ASIS

The Ada Semantic Interface Specification (ASIS) is a programmatic interface that provides access to the syntactic and semantic information derived from the compilation units stored in Ada program libraries. ASIS makes the information available through standardized, open-architecture interfaces that are independent of any vendor's Ada program library representation.

ASIS can simplify the construction of software-engineering tools such as test-case generators, metrics tools, style checkers, and documentation generators.

ASIS is an industry standard published by the Ada Semantic Interface Specification Working Group (ASISWG) under the auspices of the Association of Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Ada (SIGAda). The current ASIS version is 1.1.0 and conforms to Ada as defined in the Ada Language Reference Manual (LRM), ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A-1983.

The packages in ASIS and how to use them, are described in this document.

ASIS Compared to Rational ASIS

Rational ASIS is Rational's implementation of ASIS. It provides access to DIANA information generated by the Rational Ada compiler under Rational Apex.

Rational ASIS is a separately licensed Rational layered product. If Rational ASIS is not installed on your system, contact your Rational representative for more information.


Before Using ASIS

Rational ASIS documentation assumes that you:


Additional ASIS Documentation

Other sources of information about ASIS:


Using ASIS

Rational ASIS consists of 14 major packages.

Your ASIS program will use resources from these packages in roughly the following order:

For a description of the purpose and use of the resources in a package, read the "Key Concepts" section for that package. You can get to the "Key Concepts" section for a package by going to "Packages in ASIS" (below) and then clicking on the package name.

For more overview information, click on one of:


Packages in ASIS

Packages that perform nonsemantic operations (click on a package for detailed reference information):

Packages that provide access to specific semantic information from Ada programs:

Packages that assist in the analysis of the semantic information:


Using the ASIS Packages

Using Rational Apex, import the Apex view that contains the specification for package Asis into the view that contains your ASIS program. This pathname will be the latest view in this Apex subsystem:

In your ASIS program:

1. . Include a context clause for package Asis only:

2. . Initialize the ASIS environment:

3. . Identify and access each Ada program library that you will use:

4. . Identify each compilation unit that you will analyze using one of:

5. . Use packages Declarations, Elements, Statements, and so on to extract information from the compilation units.

6. . Close the libraries:

7. . Terminate the ASIS environment:

Note: To run your ASIS program, you must either use an Apex shell or first execute apexinit in your own operating system shell.


About the ASIS Online Reference

This Rational ASIS online reference describes the subprograms that you can call and the types that you can use to interpret the semantic content of Ada program libraries. Specifically, this document contains the following detailed reference information:

More Information About the Online Reference

Click on a topic for more information:


Moving Around in the ASIS Online Reference

Navigation through the ASIS online reference is essentially the same as for the Apex online help. You can click on:

For more information, select Help > On Help from the menu.


Organization and Content of the Online Reference

The ASIS online reference contains:

Package Entry Contents

Each package entry contains:


Reference-Entry Description

Each ASIS resource (subprogram, type, or nested package) has its own reference entry, which looks similar to the following:


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