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The Ada Language Reference Manual [ARM95] has 13 chapters and 14 annexes. Most of the material in the manual defines the Ada "core language," which must be supported by any validated Ada compiler. Six of the annexes (C through H) contain material relevant to "specialized needs." Compiler vendors are not required to support the specialized needs, but if they do, they should do so in conformance with the material in the relevant annexes. These annexes contain additional packages, attributes and pragmas, but no new language syntax.
The following table provides brief descriptions of the special needs annexes, and provides a few links to earlier sections that contain relevant discussion.
| Annex | Description | See Pages: |
| C. Systems Programming | Describes low-level programming capabilities (such as access to machine code and interrupt handling) required in real-time, embedded, distributed, and information systems. | 3.14 |
| D. Real-Time Systems | Describes characteristics (such as task priorities and direct control of tasks) of Ada implementations intended for real-time systems -- built on top of the Systems Programming Annex capabilities. | 6.1 |
| E. Distributed Systems | Describes facilities (such as ways to communicate between separate partitions) required for supporting distributed systems, using multiple platforms. | 6.6 |
| F. Information Systems | Describes facilities required for information systems, including elements supporting decimal types and data based on "picture strings" -- typically associated with COBOL programs. | 4.1, 4.5 |
| G. Numerics | Provides packages for complex arithmetic, and a "strict mode" providing guaranteed accuracy's for floating point and fixed point calculations. | |
| H. Safety and Security | Provides a number of additional pragmas and specifies documentation requirements for systems that are safety critical or have security constraints. |
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