Tool Support for Two-Tiered Architectural Design for Automotive Control Systems

• Main Authors: STEPPE, Kevin, Bylenok, Greg, Garlan, David, Schmerl, Bradley, Abirov, Kanat, Shevchenko, Nataliya
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2004
• Subjects: Model-driven architecture; architecture based design; architecture design tools; software development environments; Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/2175; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/3175/viewcontent/ASW04.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

An attractive approach to architecture-based design is to structure the development process into two tiers. The top tier represents the abstract design (or architecture) of a system in terms of abstract components. The bottom tier refines that design by making specific implementation decisions, such as platform, middleware, and component implementations. While attractive in principle, there has been relatively little industrial-based experience to shed light on problems and solutions involved in such an approach. In this paper we describe our experience in developing tools to introduce a two-tiered model-based approach to the design of Ford Motor Company’s automotive control systems, highlighting the principle challenges, and evaluating the effectiveness of our solutions for them.