Slashdot Mirror
Software Diagramming In Embedded Systems?
afd100 writes "I work for a medium-sized company building embedded systems using C. As of yet, we do not have a great design methodology, but it is something we're working on. For the last 7 years now, we've been documenting our embedded software in an IEEE'esque Software Detailed Design, and using a very cryptic block diagram to explain our software. What does the embedded software community at large currently use to graphical represent their software or do they even try this? Since the programming is functionally decomposed, is UML the right way to go?"
Take it a step up and evaluate some modeling languages and tools, such as AADL and OSATE.
http://www.aadl.info/
This stuff is MADE for real-time, embedded systems. The ultimate goal is to use it through design and analysis, and then go ahead and generate code. It does take some getting used to, and there is a lot to it so keep that in mind.
It's not perfect, and still under development, but very cool. So give it a try, see if you can pick it up. I'm generally a supporter of UML, but after being introduced to AADL and OSATE in an architecture course I was eventually convinced that it could be better than UML for this field.
Most times when people think about using flowcharts, they really should create state transition diagrams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_diagram/ to discuss, describe, and document behavior. Statecharts are an improvement on earlier state transition diagrams and are included in the latest UML specification.
Some Statechart references: