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

10.2 Static Analysis

10.2.1 Introduction

It is one thing to say that we need to evaluate code, but quite another to decide exactly what to evaluate. The issues are as follows:

  • Which code features should be assessed?
  • Which code features can be assessed?
  • What do the test results actually tell us about the quality, reliability, maintainability, and other parameters of the code?

The testing community generally agrees that the following items contribute to the quality of code:

  • Overall program structure
  • Program design techniques
  • Code readability
  • Code complexity
  • Input/output dependencies within programs
  • Data usage within programs

These features can be extracted from the source code itself. But, in order to properly assess them, we also need to take into account the software development process itself.

The following sections deal with techniques that can be applied to most software projects. However, experience has shown that...