Artemis-2011-1 decision and platform support for model‐based eVolutionary development of Embedded systems Date of preparation

Section 1 - Relevance and contributions to the content and objectives of the Call

1.1 Relevance

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  Show the relevance of your proposal in relation to at least one or more of the Industrial Priorities (see section 3.1 in Annual Work Programme (AWP) 2011) and one or more of the sub-programmes (section 3.2 in Annual Work Programme 2011). In addition please explain how your proposed work is relevant to the overall ARTEMIS targets listed in section 4 of the AWP.
  

Today, most systems are engineered in an evolutionary fashion, but none of the current model-based engineering solutions support evolutionary development. The objective of DECISIVE is to develop a methodology and tool support for model-driven evolutionary design of complex embedded systems.

DECISIVE will contribute to the following industrial priorities of the AWP 2011:

Design methods and tools: DECISIVE will provide model-based engineering methods and tools to overcome the current problems with evolutionary development by: (1) capturing in the models the knowledge gained by developing the previous product versions, (2) increase model reuse by improving the maintainability and comprehension of models (3) provide tool support for the design of extensible system architectures, and (4) support decision makers by improving the accuracy of information used to take decisions in the early stages.

Reference designs and architectures: A further goal of DECISIVE is to provide resource-efficient, nonintrusive, and deterministic monitoring techniques to extract properties from executing systems during both test and deployment.

DECISIVE will contribute to the priorities of the following sub-programmes:

We will contribute to a European Standard Reference Technology platform, proposing metamodels, methods and tools for evolutionary development. The focus on evolutionary development will reduce the times needed for re-certification and re-qualification after change.

There is a lot of knowledge gained from building a previous version of a product, and from the design flow used. Currently, this information is used informally, and is not systematically captured in the models. No solutions exist for back-annotation of information from previous product versions, gained over the whole previous development cycle: from simulations, analysis, runtime monitoring, testing, etc. We will propose (meta-) models dealing with model evolution and reuse.

Model reuse can be supported by improved model comprehension and model management. We will propose (semi-) automated model transformations to support evolutionary development. Models will have to be updated based on the knowledge learned in the previous product development. In evolutionary development, handovers between teams could be significantly improved by automated generation of standardized model-views and semi-automated editing that prevent errors from being entered into the model.

“Architectural design decisions are largely based on experience of past designs and this is difficult to apply to new situations” (ARTEMIS Strategic Research Agenda). The accuracy of decisions will be improved through the use of information gained from previous product versions. We will develop decision support methods and tools for the synthesis of system architectures that are extensible, increase quality of the product, reducing the time and development cost of evolutions.

ASP5: Computing platforms for embedded systems: There is a strong connection between contributions by the DECISIVE project to ASP1 and ASP5. To support evolutionary design, we have to record information during the runtime of previous product versions. The information recorded in this way will be fed back to the high-level models to be used in designing the new product versions. The SRA identifies the challenge of “evolvability”. We will propose architectural design patterns that improve evolvability. DECISIVE will provide methods and tools that will allow trade-offs between evolvability and other properties such as cost and performance.

DECISIVE addresses the following overall ARTEMIS targets:

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  Reduce the cost of system design by reusing models and knowledge from previous products.
  
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  Achieve reduction in development cycles through decision support and trade-off analysis tools.
  
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  Manage complexity increase by facilitating the reuse of models from previous product versions and by (semi-) automatic model management to aid comprehension across evolutions.
  
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  Reduce the effort required for re-validation and re-certification by capturing and reusing the knowledge gained in the validation and certification of the previous product versions and by the reuse of artefacts for qualification and certification.