Eiffel Becomes an Ecma Standard

GENEVA, Switzerland, September 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Eiffel is a method of software construction and a language for use in the analysis, design, implementation and maintenance of software systems. The ECMA-367 standard covers the language, with an emphasis on implementational aspects.

Originally designed by Eiffel Software under the leadership of Object Technology pioneer Bertrand Meyer, the Eiffel language is used worldwide by major corporations in mission-critical applications in finance, defence, aerospace, health care and many other fields. Eiffel is the language of choice for companies who need the best in programmer productivity and reliability of the resulting software.

Long-term value - Eiffel standardisation brings to the Eiffel community a guarantee of total, line-by-line compatibility between different implementations and of long-term value of their investment. Through its award-winning product EiffelStudio - a complete development environment covering the entire software lifecycle and the leading Eiffel implementation - Eiffel Software is committed to fully supporting the Ecma Eiffel standard.

The Eiffel standard is available, free for copying and distribution, from Ecma and Eiffel Software's websites. It has recently been submitted for ISO approval as part of Ecma's fast-track ISO status.

"Ecma has provided an outstanding environment for developing the Eiffel standard," said Emmanuel Stapf, head of the compiler division at Eiffel Software. "The committee members are all busy software professionals immersed in large, mission-critical projects and with little patience for bureaucracy. The Ecma process is business oriented and friendly, with a minimum of overhead - exactly what we needed in order to produce an innovative and carefully worked out standard in little time."

"The Eiffel standard is an exciting example of successful harmonisation," said Jan van den Beld, Secretary-General of Ecma. "It is a large intellectual achievement to develop one international standard for a language such as Eiffel, which was conceived in 1985 and has evolved ever since. Congratulations!"

About Ecma International

Since its inception in 1961, Ecma International (Ecma) has developed standards for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Consumer Electronics (CE). Ecma is a non-profit industry association of technology developers, vendors and users. Experts from industry and other organizations work together at Ecma to develop standards. Ecma submits its work for approval as ISO, IEC, ISO/IEC and ETSI standards and is the inventor and main practitioner of "fast tracking" of specifications through the standardisation process in International Standards Organisations (ISOs) such as the ISO and the IEC. Publications can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.ecma-international.org/.

About Eiffel Software

Eiffel Software was founded in 1985 with the mission of developing compilers and tools based on the power of pure object-oriented concepts to improve programmers' productivity, lifecycle efficiency and the quality of the resulting applications. For twenty years, Eiffel Software has delivered to its customers the most cost-effective and advanced development tools on a large variety of platforms. Exploiting the power of the language and tools of the environment, i.e. EiffelStudio and EiffelEnvision, Eiffel users continuously demonstrate that they can produce between two and ten times as much software in a given amount of time as can be achieved using other IDEs and tool sets. Eiffel has thus gained prominence in challenging enterprise environments in the financial, insurance, manufacturing, and government sectors as well as among independent development teams. http://www.eiffel.com/

    
    Contact

    Jan W. van den Beld
    Ecma International
    CH-1204 Geneva
    T/F +41-22-849-6000/01
    http://www.ecma-international.org/