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

4.1 Design Fundamentals

4.1.1 The Design and Development Process – an Introduction

Design and development is the process of turning ideas (the specification) into reality (the product), as shown in Figure 4.1. There are a number of distinct stages in this operation; each one can be analyzed and described as a separate item. Here, we'll concentrate on that identified as "design." But remember that when producing the product all the stages of design and development are highly interactive phases. The idea that design is a once-through activity, never to be repeated, belongs to the world of science fiction. Consequently, any useful design method must be able to handle change easily, simply, and efficiently.

The purpose of this section is to describe the design process in general conceptual terms. However, many people find that abstract descriptions of processes aren't especially helpful. So, the approach used here takes a particular (fictional) auto-engineering...