Improvement of Competitiveness by Distributed Component Based Development of Embedded Software

IST-1999-21100

www.atb-bremen.de/projects/discomp/Projects/proj-en.htm

To maintain and further increase competitiveness on the market with respect to systems for hydrographic surveying, improvement in the efficiency of the geographical distributed development process of complex embedded software is required to meet different user requirements and to enable the cost-effective tracking of improvements in technology in the domain of sensor and data processing. As a key approach to achieve the higher extendibility, modifiability, portability and more efficient maintenance of embedded software systems a component based development approach, applying object oriented design principles, will be employed. To increase the efficiency of the required distributed development approach, Internet based communication technologies will be applied by the partners involved. Achieved improvements will be assessed in a baseline project w.r.t. software modifications based on the actually applied functional oriented development approach.

The main objective of the DISCOMP project is the introduction of a new SE methodology at SAM Electronics and ATB regarding a distributed software development process, which will enable achieving a higher extendibility, modifiability and more efficient maintenance of embedded software for hydrographic systems. The DISCOMP project will focus on the single, most critical step in this improvement process: Selection, introduction and testing of the Component Based Development methods and tools for design and implementation of software modules for a sensor based measurement system. The improvement will bring benefits in terms of savings in efforts/costs for extensions, modifications and maintenance by at least 50%, reduction of travelling and meeting costs by 60%, reduction of the time-to-market by at least 30% and reduction of the number of errors identified in the integration tests of the distributed development process by at least 30%.

Based on the main objective of the DISCOMP project it is structured in several steps:

• Investigation and selection of an appropriate component based distributed design approach using OO principles for software for embedded systems,
• Selection of an appropriate tool-set supporting component based distributed design,
• application of internet based communication technologies for distributed development satisfying confidentiality constraints,
• Testing the application of the selected method/tool-set for the design and implementation of a restricted number of software modules in the hydrographic systems and
• Testing extendibility, modifiability and maintainability of the modules developed based on the introduced distributed CBD SE technology and comparing these with the same features of the modules developed based on the classical functional approach actually applied in the scope of the baseline project

Stn Atlas Marine Electronics GmbH

ZWANZIG, Christian

Department: Development Department in The Surveying Systems
Address: Behringstrasse 120
Postcode: 22763
City: Hamburg
Region: HAMBURG
Country: GERMANY
Tel: +49-4214-571856
Fax: +49-4214-574370
email: zwanzig@stn-atlas.de

Institut fuer Angewandte Systemtechnik Bremen GmbH