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

3. First Steps – Requirements Analysis and Specification

One of the most difficult tasks in any project is to establish precisely what the system requirements are. This is a problem that has been faced by project managers since time immemorial. They recognize that getting it right at the start of a job is of the utmost importance. Engineers have long realized that a disciplined, organized, and formalized approach must be used when evaluating system requirements (whether that's always been practiced is another matter). This hasn't been done through a sense of "doing the right thing." No. Experience, frequently painful, has shown that such methods are necessary. In particular, with projects of any real size, they are essential.

What is the situation concerning software projects? Considering the number of major failure stories in circulation, the answer must be "pretty awful." In the past, this situation has frequently been condoned on the...