OMG TECHNICAL MEETING SPECIAL EVENT

MARTE Tutorial

December 9, 2009,  Long Beach, CA 

| Register |

Since the adoption of the UML (R) standard, and with the new advanced version, UML2, this modeling language has been used for the development of a large number of time-critical and resource-critical systems. Based on this experience, a consensus has emerged that, while a useful tool, UML is lacking modeling elements that would be useful in key areas that are of particular concern to real-time and embedded system designers and developers. In particular, it was noticed that, first, the lack of quantifiable notions of time and resources was an impediment to its broader use in the real-time and embedded (RT/E) domain. Second, the need for a rigorous semantics definition is also a mandatory requirement for a widespread usage of the UML for RT/E systems development. And third, specific constructs were required to build models using artifacts related to the real-time operating system level such as task and semaphore.

Fortunately, and contrary to an often expressed opinion, UML has all the requisite mechanisms for addressing these issues, in particular through its extensibility facilities. Consequently, defining a suitable UML profile for RT/E consists in defining a standard way of using these capabilities to represent concepts and practices from the real-time and embedded domain. Such a first attempt is referred to be the UML Profile for Schedulability, Performance and Time (SPT) . The scope of this extension was mainly model-based RT analysis, especially rate-monotonic analysis for schedulability analysis and layered queuing analysis for performance analysis.

The new standard provided by the Object Management Group, called the MARTE profile, addresses a broader scope than its predecessor (the SPT one). MARTE tackles all the activities of the two classical branches of the V cycle, i.e. modeling and validation & verification. Modeling capabilities have to ensure both hardware and software aspects of RTES in order to improve communication/exchange between developers. It has also to foster the construction of models that may be used to make quantitative analysis regarding hardware and software characteristics.

The purpose of this tutorial is to introduce participants to the issues of model-driven development of RT/E applications and present how to use the new OMG standard for dealing with model-driven development of RT/E applications.