GeneralStore - a CASE-tool integration platform enabling model level coupling of heterogeneous designs for embedded electronic systems

The integration platform GeneralStore is a tool that assists an integrated development process starting with a model and ending with executable code. The software features coupling of subsystems from different modeling domains on model level. From the coupled model it generates a running prototype by code generation. In addition to object-oriented system modeling for software components in embedded systems, it supports time-discrete and time-continuous modeling concepts. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) metamodel is used for storing CASE data in a meta object facility (MOF) object repository whereas XML metadata interchange format (XMI) is used to interchange this data with UML-CASE-tools. The CASE-tool chain we present in this paper further supports concurrent engineering including versioning and configuration management. It provides adaptors for the tools MATLAB/Simulink/Stateflow and ARTiSAN real-time studio, as well as an importer and exporter of UML/XMI. Utilizing the UML notation for an overall system design cycle, the focus of this paper lies on the coupling of heterogeneous subsystems and on a new code generation and coupling approach.