Elektronik automotive magazine has published an article describing work done at Daimler Chrysler on managing diversity in the automotive domain.

A basic problem automotive systems developers are facing is the large number of possible vehicle functions and options due for example to differences in target markets, vehicle type and engine capacity.

This variability can only be handled economically through strategic reuse and this requires a formal model for the variability inherent in the product line.

The article describes an approach to this using the pure::variants specialist solution for managing variability and product lines in conjunction with the widely-used Simulink® toolset.

Here’s the blurb:

A characteristic of today’s motor vehicles is a wide range of variants with slightly different functions. Since this variability has to be reflected in the software development models, it is essential that there are concepts for systematically handling the variability of functional models. Differentiating between the central and model specific variability information allows uniform handling in Simulink and creates an explicit representation of distributed model variability.

I couldn’t have said it better myself…

The original version of the article is in German but an English version can be downloaded from the Software Acumen web site here: Handling functional variants in Simulink® models (PDF 898kb opens in new window)

Simulink is a registered trademark of The Mathworks Inc.

Today was a little quieter than day 1 of ESS.

This was a little surprising as the second day had been busier at last year’s ESS and we were also expecting increased footfall due to today’s Model-Driven Development stream at the associated IET Technical conference.

However, we did get a fair number of people visiting the stand but between visits I was able to go round and speak to some of the model-based development tool vendors about Code Generation 2008.

IIRC I spoke to ARTiSAN Software, Connective Logic Systems, Esterel, Kennedy-Carter, Mentor Graphics, No Magic and The Mathworks all of whom have some sort of MDSD capability albeit addressed at a wide variety of problem domains.

I didn’t explain earlier but some of you may have spotted the silver objects in a large bowl on the table in our stand photo:

Here Danilo Beuche of pure-systems, the developers of pure::variants, illustrates:

These silver stress balls were the must have giveaway at ESS 2007. (OK, of the 4 companies giving away stress balls these were the must have ones.)  I think we must have shifted around 60 of these things - people must be stressed in embedded land, although one visitor said it would be ideal for her dog!

In case you didn’t notice these stress balls fit in with our new ‘Relax…‘ campaign as illustrated on our stand.

However, by the end of the day we were all pretty unrelaxed. Being on your feet for a couple of days takes it out of you - although on the whole I personally find it an enjoyable experience. So, after the exhibition closed, we packed up in a surprisingly short time and headed back to Cambridge.

It will be interesting to see how ESS 2008 fares. Although it is the largest embedded exhibition in the UK it is around 20-25 times smaller than Germany’s Embedded World. I also get the feeling that an increasing number of people are simply turning to the web to find information and see product demos.

However, what you can’t get through the web is an immediate interaction with the product experts. At best this means it takes you longer to work out how the product could be used in your environment, at worst you could wrongly reject a product that could in fact be very beneficial to you. This is particularly difficult for us as variant management and software product lines are not (yet) well-known terms and so we find it hard to explain exactly what pure::variants could do for people.

With the stand in place we waited for the exhibition to open…

This year, like 2006, we’re demonstrating pure::variants the leading toolset for variant management and software product line development.

This is the UK’s largest exhibition for embedded developers by far and with an increased number of exhibitors we expected more people through the door.

By 10:30 a number of people had made it to our stand near the back of the hall. We find that people tend to work their way through the stands nearer the front first.

We generally do a short demonstration when people arrive on our stand and try and find out how pure::variants maps to their specific problems. The embedded space is very diverse and this is reflected in the types of participant that visit the stand.

Sometimes people with little software knowledge come onto the stand to find out exactly what it is we do. This seems to be a recurring pattern as companies that once produced little software are finding themselves having to produce more and more of the stuff.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are very experienced software developers who already know about the problem of variant management, have read about us and are keen to explore in great depth precisely what pure::variants can do for them and how it integrates into their overall software life cycle. Until you have a chance to find out more about the person you don’t know where in this spectrum their knowledge lies.

The press were also in attendance and I was happy to speak to a small number of editors and journalists about pure::variants and next year’s Code Generation 2008 event. There is a growing interest in model-based software development in the embedded community and hopefully our event is contributing to this as well as benefitting from it.

More on ESS 2007 tomorrow.

A short drive from Cambridge saw us at the NEC car park unloading our stand for this year’s Embedded Systems Show which took place from 17th-18th October.

I guess most people never see what these things look like before the exhibitors arrive. In general there is a mass of activity as the shell-schemes are assembled and wired up and furniture is delivered.

Here’s the view from our stand on our arrival:

and here’s the view of our ’stand’:

Richard and Sally Blackburn of Energi Tech were around doing some work for their clients SDC Systems. I know both Richard and Sally from the Embedded Masterclass events so I said hello.

Then, over the next hour or so, we gradually transformed the raw stand into our finished product…

Step 1 - The frame for the ‘pop-up’ stand

Step 2 - Completing the ‘pop-up’ stand

Step 3 - The assembled counter

Step 4 - adding the roll-ups and literature stands

Step 5 - the finished article.

We’d wrapped up the stand assembly by 18:00 and headed off into Birmingham for the night.

All in all we were pretty pleased with the new stand design and reckon it’s a significant improvement over our stand at ESS 2006.

Read more on ESS 2007 next week…

The Embedded Systems Show takes place next week so I thought it might be worth giving my own personal take on what to see there.

• I’ll be visiting the ARTiSAN Software stand to get an update on ARTiSAN Studio. This is a model-driven development toolset aimed at avionics development. We carried an interview on the Code Generation Network earlier this year with Fabrizio Pugnetti a Senior Consultant at ARTiSAN’s Italian office. Lots of other model-driven tool providers will be at the exhibition if you’re in the market for said type of tool but I know ARTiSAN best.
• No Magic will also be at ESS. I’ve heard good things about their Magic Draw generator toolset so feel I should see a demo if nothing more. Perhaps I can persuade them to write an article for the Code Generation Network.
• I’ve blogged before about Proven Software Solutions - it looks like they’re continuing to grow so their reusable software for embedded development brokerage seems to be working despite my initial scepticism.
• The model-driven design for software track of the associated conference could be interesting with Juha-Pekka Tolvanen speaking on Domain-Specific Modelling for full code generation. Juha-Pekka was a speaker at Code Generation 2007 and comes highly recommended.
• One thing I think is new for ESS is a set of free design workshops covering topics such as Model-Based testing, Graphical C programming and static analysis for embedded systems. I’d be interested to hear from anyone who attends these to find out what they’re like.

Finally, if you are planning on attending then do say hello. Me and Danilo Beuche of pure-systems will be demonstrating the pure::variants variant management toolset and it’s associated add-ons for DOORS, Simulink, ClearQuest and CaliberRM on stand 532.

I guess many of you will have been on holiday in August and judging by a lack of blog posts here may have assumed that I was away too.

However, aside from a few days off at the start of the month learning to sail, the lack of blog postings has largely been caused by a very busy month.

The main focus this past month has been further work on next year’s Code Generation 2008 event. We’ve now finalised the budget for this event and this has enabled us work on the sponsorship prospectus. I’ve also been working with the Program Committee to draft up a Call for Speakers with a view to launching this in October. Finally, we’ve started the work of recruiting Supporting Partners for the event. These are essential to help promote the event and to give it more credibility with sponsors and participants.

Our other focus has been further work towards October’s Embedded Systems Show. Unless you’ve exhibited at this event or something similar in scale you perhaps don’t realise how much work has to be done to make the event a success. There’s a lot of paperwork to be done as well as designing the stand, ordering stuff and a hundred other things in addition to publicising the event to our contacts and to the wider community.

All of this is of course in addition to the normal activities of delivering consultancy and training, supporting those customers who haven’t gone on holiday,  keeping the business running smoothly and on-going business development . It’s no wonder I feel like another holiday already

An EE Times article “Standard proposal to simplify car software design“ reports on a proposal from the German mobilSoft project to standardize variant handling in automotive software development. Variants arise through different vehicle characteristics, different OEM requirements or different legal or environmental constraints in the end-user country.

By standardizing variant handling the group hopes to simplify the automotive software development process and make it more reliable. The aim of the proposal is to create a common data platform to streamline the development process over several product lines.

The pure::variants product we distribute is being investigated by the mobilSoft research group - see here for a brief description of this research.

The latest Motor Industry Software Reliability Association (MISRA) news has arrived in my mailbox and it notes that their draft C++ guidelines are now available for public comment.

These guidelines are for the use of the C++ language in critical systems. Their aim is to provide a set of rules that encourage good programming practices and avoid poorly-defined or insecure features of the language.

At a recent talk I went to it was noted that there were a couple of hundred features of C++ that fell into these categories so the guideline authors had their work cut out. However, the MISRA team did have a good starting point in earlier work at Lockheed Martin considering the same problem in the context of the Joint Strike Fighter development.

Production of the guidelines was motivated by an increasing interest in the industry in moving to C++ from C. (note to all you Java/Ruby folks out there - no I am not making this up.)

To participate in the review you need to download the form at http://www.misra.org.uk/misra_cpp_eoi.pdf sign it and return it to MISRA.

Even though it’s still 3 months off our preparations for Embedded Systems Show 2007 started some time ago as it’s our biggest event of the year.

We booked our stand back in February but were by no means the first to do so. The floor plan is now filling up nicely in what will hopefully be the biggest year yet for the show. We’re on stand 532, next to Feabhas, the embedded training company, opposite Chris Hill’s Phaedrus and backing onto MKS. My understanding is that Chris will be holding some sort of MISRA launch on his stand at some point during the show so hopefully we’ll get some spillover from that.

I also note that there will once again be a Model-Driven Software stream in the associated conference. This is doubly good for us as (a) a lot of the delegates who visited our stand last year had come specifically for that stream and (b) it gives us another chance to promote Code Generation 2008 :-)

The exhibitor manual has also turned up including a request for ticket invitations. The organisers claim that sending out these invitations is an effective method of letting people know about the event but I’m not so sure. In my experience engineers are deluged with mail, most of which is junk…

Lord Bhattacharayya was scheduled to make yesterday’s Lord Austin Lecture on the theme of The Challenges of the 21st Century: Revolutions in Global Markets, Regulation and Customisation.

In his synopsis he notes three challenges facing manufacturers:

• The scale of global markets means that corporations will have to be more flexible while providing total quality in manufacturing and processes and increasing R&D spend. Time-to-market will become increasingly critical.
• Manufacturers will be faced with differing needs from different societies responding to global warming and safety in different ways.
• Increasing technological sophistication and consumer purchasing power will lead to increasing demands for more tailored products.

The lecture was at the 3rd IET Automotive Electronics Conference where I was yesterday to give a talk on Automotive Variant Management - more on this later…