Introducing Support for Embedded and Real-Time Devices into Existing Hierarchical Component System: Lessons Learned

As embedded and real-time systems became an inherent part of many electronic appliances of everyday use, the demand for their development has grown enormously. Increasing complexity of these systems leads to demands of tools and techniques addressing their efficient and short time-to-market development. One of the possible ways to tackle the problem is a reuse of tools, methodologies and know how already established and successfully adopted in other application domains. Such transfer cannot be done inherently without appropriate modification and methodical adaptation based on an analysis of domain requirements. The paper analyzes necessary modifications and extensions of a general purpose component-based technology to enable development of embedded real-time systems. In addition, we present our own experience obtained while tailoring advanced component framework SOFA 2 to support development of embedded and real-time systems.