Book Image

The Complete Edition - Software Engineering for Real-Time Systems

By : Jim Cooling
Book Image

The Complete Edition - Software Engineering for Real-Time Systems

By: Jim Cooling

Overview of this book

From air traffic control systems to network multimedia systems, real-time systems are everywhere. The correctness of the real-time system depends on the physical instant and the logical results of the computations. This book provides an elaborate introduction to software engineering for real-time systems, including a range of activities and methods required to produce a great real-time system. The book kicks off by describing real-time systems, their applications, and their impact on software design. You will learn the concepts of software and program design, as well as the different types of programming, software errors, and software life cycles, and how a multitasking structure benefits a system design. Moving ahead, you will learn why diagrams and diagramming plays a critical role in the software development process. You will practice documenting code-related work using Unified Modeling Language (UML), and analyze and test source code in both host and target systems to understand why performance is a key design-driver in applications. Next, you will develop a design strategy to overcome critical and fault-tolerant systems, and learn the importance of documentation in system design. By the end of this book, you will have sound knowledge and skills for developing real-time embedded systems.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Preface
15
Glossary of terms

14.2 Software Life Cycle Documentation – Overview

In real-time systems, there aren't always clear divisions between documents relating to the system, hardware, and software features. A better distinction is to group terms as they apply to specific aspects of the project development. In this chapter, we're concerned mainly with the software life cycle and its associated documentation:

Figure 14.6: Software life cycle documentation

As shown here, each of the major phases has a set of associated documents – which are generated as work proceeds on the project. This point needs to be stressed. The information is produced and recorded as a result of performing analysis, design, and development. It should not be confused with what is produced specifically to support in-service use, maintenance, and subsequent development of the software.

The system's functional specification is created during the requirements phase. Essentially, it...