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

7. Practical Diagramming Methods

Chapter 6, Diagramming – an Introduction, laid the groundwork for the use of diagrams as a software design tool. In general, it described the basic ideas of the subject in a fairly abstract way. These now need to be related to practical methods. In this chapter, the work is extended to show:

  • The general role of diagrams as a design and modeling tool/language
  • How these fit in with the functional flow and object-oriented (OO) design techniques
  • The relationship between functional flow and data flow methods
  • The information contained in the various diagrams
  • Why extensions and modifications of basic diagram types are needed in certain real-time applications
  • The general syntax and semantics of commonly used notations
  • That different techniques have been developed to solve the same problem
  • Those methods that differ in detail are often based upon the same structural concepts

How we use these diagrams when...