My interview with Axel Uhl for the Code Generation Network is now available.

Axel describes SAP’s strategy for modelling tools, talks about his previous work with ArcStyler and tells us how he got into computing.

Axel is a keynote speaker at Code Generation 2007 where he’ll talk about Model-Driven Development in the Enterprise.

Download the interview here. (PDF)

Last Thursday saw us exhibiting at the Embedded Masterclass near Cambridge.

Embedded Masterclasses have been running for a couple of years now and are aimed at showcasing the best in embedded tools and technologies. The events are capably organized by Richard Blackburn of Energi Tech.

By 8:00 our stand was up and the exchange of gossip with fellow exhibitors - some of whom I’d met at previous Masterclasses and elsewhere - had been completed. Around 8:15 the first engineers started arriving - we were expecting anything up to around 120 people to turn up - a record preregistration for this event.

We had our first visitors to the stand quite early on and there was a good stream of people throughout the day.

At 11:00 I gave our scheduled talk “2 million options aren’t enough” - which outlined some of the problems faced by companies developing embedded system variants, described variant management with feature modelling and then looked at three sample use cases:

1. A mobile games developer who is spending 50% of its development budget on porting for multiple platforms. Variant management could help them by letting them model their game and platform variants and so produce configured product variants more quickly and more reliably.
2. An engine-management system supplier who would like to make knowledge of its Simulink configurations explicit. Variant management could help them by letting them formally model configuration knowledge in Feature and Family Models. This means that they can reduce the time it takes to configure a Simulink model from days to hours.
3. A mobile phone operator who subcontracts phone manufacture to third-parties and needs to be able to reuse requirements across different device specification documents. Variant Management could help them by letting them capture common and variable requirements in Feature models and then use these to generate device-specific feature sets.

Some of the audience had heard of variant  management and some clearly had the problem so this made things easier.  It also meant that there was a good 10-15 minutes of questions during and at the end of the talk and this carried on during lunch when a queue of people formed up to carry on the discussion.

	Warming up the audience
	Getting to the point

All in all a worthwhile and fun day.