Support of AI-Powered Workflows,
New Architecture Verification Features and More Security Rules and Directives Included
We are pleased to announce the release of Axivion 7.12. It not only includes additional safety and security rules as well as the NVIDIA® Directives from their CUDA C++ Guidelines for Robust and Safety-Critical Programming. The new release also now offers additional features such as the Architecture Export to Sparx Enterprise Architect and supports AI-powered workflows.
Ready for AI-powered workflows
Axivion now supports AI-powered workflows. Customers wishing to make Axivion part of their AI-powered workflows, can now do so by simply activating the Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server (technical preview) and using their preferred LLM. This allows the AI agent to access the Axivion documentation and the findings from the analysis to help developers understand and fix bugs faster; all within the familiar IDE. The benefit for companies: Increased productivity and less resources needed for development and maintenance of the software means faster time-to-market and improved return on investment. Of course, connecting the agent to other sources (e.g. the internet or internal servers) to use the findings from Axivion in combination with other data is possible (e.g. for reporting including other company-internal information). The new release also comes with an enhanced plugin for VS Code, which allows developers not only to use AI to understand the code, but also to make changes with the help of AI.
It is important to note that Axivion does not use AI for the analysis itself, thus making it suitable for developing software for safety-critical environments.
→ Read more about how Axivion supports AI-powered workflows
Next Level Architecture Verification
The Axivion 7.12 release has multiple improvements and new features for architecture verification. Besides extending Plant UML C4 imports and improving workflows with Gravis, this release comes with two new features:
Advanced Architecture Archaeology
Axivion now allows users to generate an architecture model from the existing code. Legacy code and 3rd party code often lack proper documentation of the software architecture. Instead of spending hours with creating hypotheses and then testing and refining them over and over again, Axivion can extract the information from the code and create the corresponding model. Customers can define how their project is modeled. For example, they can specify whether directories, files, namespaces, or other elements should be represented as packages and components. Modeling can be performed down to the detailed design level (functions and variables). The automatically created architecture can then be modified in Gravis, Axivion’s modelling tool, and be used for architecture verification. This saves time and allows e.g. legacy code to meet the same high quality standards as newly developed code.
→ You can also use Architecture as Code
Architecture Export to Enterprise Architect
Axivion already allows various ways of importing architecture models (e.g. via UML tools or any other machine-readable format). With the 7.12 release Axivion now also offers an Export feature. All necessary elements, such as components, functions, attributes, information flow and dependencies are extracted from the code and an architecture model of the current project is created. This complete model can then be imported into Sparx Enterprise Architect, serving as initial model thereby eliminating the need to reverse-engineer the software manually. Software architects can also modify and adapt the model in Enterprise Architect (e.g. if components are added), and re-import it into Axivion to perform the architecture verification.
→ Read more about Architecture Export
Up to Date With the Latest Safety & Security Regulations
Axivion is ideal for software development in safety-critical environments, such as automotive, medical or industrial automation. Therefore, delivering outstanding security-related features remains a top priority to ensure developers can easily meet the strict requirements in these industries. The Axivion 7.12 release includes additional rules for CWE and CERT.
To further support the development of GPU applications based on NVIDIA CUDA Axivion now also includes all five directives set by NVIDIA. This means that Axivion for CUDA, which lead to the Qt Group becoming part of NVIDIA Halos AI Systems Inspection Lab, now covers 100% of all rules and directives mentioned in NVIDIA’s CUDA C++ Guidelines for Robust and Safety Critical Programming.
Tool qualification is an integral part of safety-critical software development. Axivion’s Tool Qualification Kit includes an extensive choice of test files to support the classification and qualification of tool chains. With the 7.12 release the Tool Qualification Kit can now also be used for DO-330 certification to provide the evidence needed to qualify Axivion as a software tool in safety-critical airborne system development. This significantly reduces the qualification effort for teams in the aerospace industry.
Other Highlights of Axivion 7.12
Other noteworthy improvements of Axivion include:
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General purpose rules
Axivion introduces the category of General Purpose rules, which includes generic rules and metrics for C and C++. -
Extended Rust support
Basic support for Rust was added with the last release as technical preview. With the 7.12 release Rust is now an officially supported language. The features have been extended to now also cover metrics, clone management and additional language constructs. -
C#14 Support
Axivion stays up to date with the latest compiler developments: Developers using C#14 can now fully leverage Axivion’s code analysis capabilities. -
Updated EDG parser
The new release includes the integration of the latest EDG C/C++ parser. -
Modernized Dashboard Settings Page
The admin page for user preferences has been re-designed and the usability has been improved. -
Offline Local Build
Local builds in the VS Code plugin now do not require a reference dashboard anymore. This is especially useful for developers in regulated environments or restricted networks. -
Simplified set-up
New and simplified set-ups for more build systems have been added.
