Ravenscar

Ravenscar may refer to more than one topic. The primary use is as a place name in England and as the name of a real-time software profile developed for safety-critical systems.

Ravenscar is a village and civil parish in the Scarborough district of North Yorkshire, England. It lies on the coast of the North York Moors, atop the cliff-line near Robin Hood’s Bay. Today it is a small rural community that forms part of the Ravenscar parish and is commonly associated with the coastal landscape and hiking routes in the area. The name is believed to derive from a combination of local linguistic elements referencing ravens and the rugged cliff terrain.

In computing, the Ravenscar Profile refers to a restricted subset of the Ada programming language designed for safety-critical real-time systems. Developed by an international group in the 1990s, the profile imposes constraints on tasking, memory management, and scheduling to enable static analysis and predictable timing. It limits dynamic task creation and certain runtime features to facilitate formal verification and certification efforts. The Ravenscar Profile is named after Ravenscar, North Yorkshire, where a workshop contributing to its development was held. It has influenced the design of other real-time language subsets and remains relevant in high-integrity software, including applications in aerospace, defense, and industrial control, as well as in SPARK Ada toolchains.