About Little Tree Consulting

Software Engineering

Design and Implementation with Ada

Design of software systems is an art learned by practice. Tools can support the capture of design ideas, and many tools can check the consistency of separately designed elements, but the translation of textual requirements to software design is still a creative process. General concepts such as object definition, system layering, software reuse, and designed-in maintenance and test are easy to talk about but hard to realize. Working with people who have successfully performed this process before saves time and provides apprenticeship for inexperienced designers.

Effective use of the Ada language for interface design and implementation is also developed through experience. Techniques for partitioning the system into packages, defining layered typing, using tasking even in real time, reusing and/or defining reusable components, and using target-dependent features can greatly affect project success. Time-critical systems are often affected by the compilerÕs implementation of Ada constructs. Understanding what issues are critical and how to evaluate their correct usage within a software system can save future redesign and implementation effort.

Software Analysis and Verification

Existing software can be analyzed to determine its adherence to correctness or quality metrics. Visual inspection or code reviews have been shown to identify more problems with less time investment than explicit testing or debugging. Although explicit testing is essential, design and code reviews can greatly improve system correctness and consistency, especially in early design and development phases. Employing external reviewers can have the added benefit of avoiding preconceptions developed early in the design and the potential internal conflicts associated with criticism. My analysis is also supported by tools that traverse the software and collect locations that exhibit certain characteristics. Typically, tools of this kind have reduced their analysis to a quality-factor number that gives little help on which places could be improved and how. The Ada Analyzer performs traversal and analysis, displays an overview of the results in a hypertable format, and allows direct traversal into the code for final determination of the problem and possible improvements. The tools analyze code in the following ways: Custom analysis also can be developed rapidly based on an extensive library of utilities and tool templates.

Prototyping

Prototyping can be used effectively for rapid development of the key elements of a software system early in the process of concept development or design. Prototypes allow projects to evaluate preliminary design decisions, analyze incomplete requirement specifications, and rapidly arrive at proof-of-concept demonstrations. Using existing utilities and effective selection of what to implement can minimize the effort required to arrive at an effective prototype. Consultants with extensive Ada experience can assist in the rapid development of software with the help of proven implementation experience and existing libraries of utilities. Early prototyping also can give the development staff more experience with Ada, the development tools, and implementation techniques.

Development Practice

Consulting in this domain is often called process engineering because it deals with the processes associated with software development. Although generally accepted development methodologies are available, actual practice always differs for each project because of customer requirements, available development tools, and project staff. One key aspect of process definition is its integration with the host and the tools it provides. Consulting support for the development processes of configuration management, testing, documentation, verification and quality assurance, and automated code generation are discussed in the following sections.

Configuration Management

Rational Apex offers subsystems as its primary mechanism for software partitioning and support for the configuration-management processes of history collection, internal release, definition of testing configurations, and specification of customer delivery. Consulting can help determine how best to map the software design structure into subsystems. Methods for updating design interfaces, releasing, and building system configurations can be defined to match project requirements. Support for complex strategies of parallel development, multimachine implementation, and target download and test also can be defined.

Existing software that has already been developed in subsystems can be analyzed to improve partitioning, reduce recompilation and downloading requirements, and check the consistency of each subsystem and readiness for release. Analysis also can be supported by tools that look into the configuration-management databases of the Rational Environment, extract information, and display it in a convenient hypertable format.

Testing

Test Automation: Tools supporting management of test programs, test input and output, and regression testing have been available for a long time and can be used with good results. Even unit-test generation for analysis of test coverage is possible in simple cases. More difficult is the formal testing of integrated software at higher levels in the hierarchy. This software is often decision-making or state-machine-oriented software with complex inputs and outputs. Instrumentation techniques (with code elimination for the final target version) can be used to support cause-and-effect testing of complex code. Input values can be inserted into the code, and the events resulting from execution can be collected to ensure that all required events occurred in the correct sequence. It is important, however, to design this approach into the software early in the development.

Host-Based Target Emulation: Developers on most projects assume from the outset that all testing must be performed on the target. They often come to this conclusion for one or more of the following reasons:

Although final verification and, of course, timing-related testing must be performed on the target, a great deal of algorithmic and basic integration testing can be performed on the host where the environment is more comfortable for the user. This is not accomplished without effort, but the resulting time savings can be dramatic in most cases. Host testing allows all users to test in parallel with good debugging support and allows them to immediately repair code directly with the configuration-management environment. The basic approach is the following:

Verification and Quality Assurance

The software-analysis tools described above can be used directly or customized to ensure that software is written in the required style and does not use Ada constructs that are prohibited by the project. Simple requirements-tracing capability also can be supported through annotations and traversal collection.

Reporting software problems and requirements changes and tracking their progress until completion also can be accomplished through tool support on the Rational Environment.

Ada Software Auditing

A software audit is a review by a team of expert Ada developers of the source code of a Ada software project. Peer review has been proven to be the most effective method of locating software defects and improving the overall quality of software. Auditing by external experts delivers the effectiveness of peer review but offers the additional benefit of independent auditors that are not biased with prior knowledge of the software. External auditors are also unencumbered by project history, political issues, or personal bias.

Software Auditing is best performed before key release points in the software development lifecycle. An audit can be performed after detailed design is complete to check the integrity of the program structure, type model, data model, error-handling model, and multi-threading design if present. Validation of the design at this point can potentially save more costly restructuring efforts in later lifecycle phases. More mature software can be analyzed for code defects, internal consistency, efficiency, and adherence to project standards. Well established code can be audited for portability, reusability, and its future maintainability.

The Ada Analyzer, a static analysis tool with the ability to analyze code in many dimensions, will assist auditors in the locating Ada constructs that impact the analysis objectives of the audit. The Ada Analyzer can be used initially to help the auditors understand the structure and content of the code. The tools also locate all instances of Ada constructs matching some analysis requirement. It can find the "needles in the haystack" in voluminous amounts of code and do so with computer speed.

Audit deliverables consist of reports that describe specific quality issues, and a list of all instances in the code that violate or impact that issue. Reports are delivered in two formats. An online form, with hypertext links to actual Ada constructs, can be used interactively to further investigate reported constructs "in context" to decide whether an update is required. Hard copy reports with line number locations of all reported constructs can be distributed at review meetings, or sent via e-mail to individual developers responsible for sections of the code. It is expected that all reports will be scrutinized carefully before a decision to modify the software is made. Some changes may be deemed too risky to incorporate into mature Automated Generation of Application Software

Several projects have achieved dramatic improvements in coding efficiency and reduced testing costs through use of automated generation of software. Typically this involves the collection of all system data items that share a common pattern of implementation. All bus messages, for example, are generally handled in the same way. Specific attributes may alter scaling or data format, but most of the message-processing code is very similar. This code can be generated automatically to save time and reduce errors that are introduced when coded manually. Consulting can be used to identify areas where automatic generation is possible and to employ existing software utilities to reduce project development time.

Summary

Especially in early project phases, consulting can be an effective way of optimizing staff experience and use of available development tools. My extensive experience with Ada, the Rational Environment, and development practice can positively affect project success within a short period of time.


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