Embedded Systems Design Europe - April 2008 - (Page 21)

software making it unnecessary for the modeler to be concerned with them. In addition, a single model can be used to generate code for multiple targets and functions (e.g. localization, early prototyping, build scripts) – an immensely valuable ability for the myriad of companies that expend considerable time and energy porting their products or components. This automated code generation from models is possible because of domain speciﬁcity: the modeling language, code frameworks, and generators are designed to tightly ﬁt the requirements of a single company. The result of this speciﬁcity and automation is a reduction in complexity and a dramatic increase in productivity. Experiences from a wide range of companies and application domains (e.g. Lucent[1], Panasonic[2], Nokia[3], EADS[4]) have consistently proven that DSM is 5 –10 times faster than current, manual development practices. The reason for this is that software engineers are able to focus on the functionalities they are looking to develop – not on their laborious, routine implementation. Industry analysts are also asserting the beneﬁts of DSM, e.g. in 2004 the Burton Group reported[5] that they saw domain-speciﬁc languages and custom metamodels to be the greatest aid to productivity. Improved quality is another key beneﬁt of DSM. Sustaining or improving quality standards remains a signiﬁcant issue for all software developers, and maintaining quality while confronting increased complexity, can be immensely challenging. Generated code avoids the risks of careless mistakes, syntax problems, and logic errors. It is common in manual coding practices for errors to be introduced during updates – an understandable occurrence when multiple developers, need to make multiple changes, to multiple sections of the code. With DSM, a single change in the generator is often enough to correct all the occurrences simultaneously. COMPELLING STUDY A compelling study[6] from the United States Air Force comparing DSM with component-based development found that domain-speciﬁc languages and generators were not only three times faster than the code components, but led to 50 percent fewer errors – a signiﬁcant ﬁnding in an industry focused on mission-critical systems. An important point to keep in mind is that every language will almost certainly need to change and grow over time, and it is essential that the chosen tool support is able to handle this evolution. Many organizations have learned this lesson the hard way, having found themselves left with useless models that are unable to evolve as needs and requirements change. MetaEdit+ fully supports the idea of language evolution; modiﬁcations can be easily made to the modeling language at any time and these changes can be automatically and non-destructively propagated to all models deﬁned by that modeling language. While the key beneﬁts of domainspeciﬁc modeling – improved productivity and quality – are desirable to just about every organization, DSM as a development approach is not. When building any application or feature for the ﬁrst time that has never been developed before, it is illogical to assume that one is going to be able automate the process at the beginning. The organization must be familiar with what they are doing, before they start to automate their development practices – to the best of my knowledge this hold true for all areas of automa21 www.embedded.com/europe | embedded systems design europe | APRIL 2008 020-021-022-023_ESDE.indd 21 10/04/08 15:42:28 http://www.embedded.com/europe

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Embedded Systems Design Europe - April 2008 Contents Chip Industry Confronts 'Software' Gap Wind River's VxWorks OS Part of the nEUROn UCAV Demonstrator iSuppli Cuts Electronic Equipment Forecast Study Says GigE Vision Not Mature Chip Aids Wireless Health Monitoring Kontron Reports Strong Financial Growth Xilinx Completes Virtex-5 Line-Up French Project Builds Open Platform Home Automation Group Uses Enocean Radio Layer MIPs Adds Multi-Core Option to Portfolio Cover Feature: Next Gen Programmable Chips: Why Can't Hardware Be More Like Software? Improving Productivity & Quality With Domain-Specific Modeling Efficient CRC Calculation With Minimal Memory Footprint Do-It-Yourself Linux Embedded Development Tools Hardware/Software Verification Enters the Atomic Age New Products Advertising Contacts

Embedded Systems Design Europe - April 2008

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