Usine Logicielle - Detailed introduction

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Detailed introduction
OpenDevFactory
MoDriVal
Inflexion

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In this article we remind the proect's challenges, its objectives and we shall start describing without much details the industrials engineering issues that derive from deploying the Model Driven Engineering paradigm in the software industry.

Making free foreign phone calls has almost become customary whereas only a few months ago such a service was accessible only in ones dreams. The miracle maker’s name is Voice on IP (VoIP), a technology which allows using the freeways of the internet to support conversations. However, making use of the VoIP is not excluding such difficulties as certifying the confidentiality of conversations or even guaranteeing the reliability of the service. Such was the case recently demonstrated with Free Telecom which mistakenly transferred its clients’ calls to the capital’s fire department call centre in May 2005. Yet, clearly more dramatic events like the accidents of the American space shuttle or of the Ariane rocket which are still fresh in our memories prove how expensive, difficult and dangerous it can be to develop such systems.

These problems and accidents clearly illustrate the increase of the complexity and the pressure that rules on the reduction of engineering costs and on the systems operation which goes hand in hand with the requirement of a high level of safety and of performance.
This equation is stated for the numerous types of complex systems and constitutes an economy background for system engineering to which in-dustrials are confronted to.
But what are complex systems? complex systems match the following characteristics:

Strong technical heterogeneity (assembly of software and hardware components)
Large dimension (high number of complex calculations, organisation as systems of sys-tems.)
Dynamicity (sensitivity to time, functional evolution depending on the context.)
Capacity to deal with close interactions with human beings and the physical environment.
Capacity to take in charge critical missions in terms of security for persons and goods.

For systems with such characteristics, Usine Logicielle is the project labelled by the System@tic “pôle de compétitivité” which has for ambition to provide the tools and processes allowing the increase of productivity for their development, the increase of their quality and thus that will provide the response to the market pressure.
The activities lead by Usine Logicielle are established on the results of the scientific and technical communities which are segmented into three fields:

The model driven engineering (MDE) which places the model at the heart of the system development.
The techniques of verification, proof and simulation.
The optimisation and the flexibility of execution and communication infra-structures.

The results have shown that there is no unique existing tooling solution to deal with the design of all the types of complex systems. A generic core can be isolated but numerous specialisations of processes and tools must be made in order to answer to the needs of the different technological domains and markets.
The strong belief that the mastering of the model driven engineering and the design of systems must be treated both on the technical dimension and on the domain dimension crystallized during the constitution of the pôle de compétitivité Sys-tem@tic Paris-Région. At the heart of the pole, the Usine Logicielle project is positioned as a supplier of engineering technologies used in a generic manner and on a small number of technical application fields: for the moment Real time, Embedded and Technical Information Systems. This project plays a central role with regards to the other projects of the pole Sys-tem@tic in the sense that these technologies can be composed and specialised to deal with vertical application domains needs required by other projects of the pole: The Automobile Market, Super computers, High scale simulations etc.

The Market position of Usine Logicielle

In order to take up this challenge, three capital requirements must be met:

The scientific and technical research community must elaborate new solutions.
These solutions must be submitted for experimentation to large companies who are the future users of engineering solutions and are confronted on a daily basis with the problem of mastering the complexity. They are the ones who vouch for the pertinence of the problems to resolve and for their proposed solutions.
The utilisation of the solutions must be generalized in the French industrial web. Only the small and medium size software publishers or consulting companies are capable to play this role of dissemination vector.

Thus, Usine Logicielle logically joins in its con-sortium these three types of partners.

Improve the competitive advantage of France, create a basis for use by other technical domains, reinforce the French economic web.

Tools for software development suitable for complex systems engineering mainly elaborates today in major DARPA’s projects in the United States and/or in other few American software editors. These tools have a generalist vocation. They only partly cover the specific needs of the embedded real time domain and of the technical information systems domain, especially from the expression of behaviour and verification perspec-tives.

Technical Objectives:
One of the objectives of Usine Logicielle is to create the conditions allowing the development of an offer more adaptable, durable -open source and /or based on proprietary solutions- of industrial quality and well documented, taking into account the main standards of the aimed domains: at first the Real Time and Embedded domains. At the end of the project, other signifi-cant standards from particular business domains of the Pole’s projects and from other national poles could be considered: Pole Aeronautique-Espace- Système Embarqués de Midi-Pyrénées or Pole Image et Réseaux de Bretagne.

Economic objectives;
This technology framework available in France and accessible to the best teams in the field must allow the development of innovating tools that the French Industries need while at the same time federating our best researchers efforts. It also allows the reinforcement of start ups and French small and medium size companies operating in the domain allowing them to develop new activities and products.

Supplying an open and coherent platform integrating tools for modelling, production, validation and execution of complex systems.
Experiencing industrial engineering issues to extend and validate the platform’s components.

Usine Logicielle places modelling at the central place of the development of complex software systems where the model becomes the reference for the application from which codes, documentations and tests can be generated. Usine Logicielle focuses essentially on automation, techniques of generation, full scale deployment of techniques of validation and verification but also on the capitalisation of the know how and the sharing of software reusable assets between domains. The Work Program splits into three distinct and complementary axis:

The study and development of a support for model driven engineering and more particularly for the modelling and pro-duction of embedded systems: OpenDevFactory sub project .
The study and development of a support for the test and validation of models and of software components issued from the model driven engineering: MoDrival sub project.
The definition of a flexible and optimised component based execution platform dedicated to real time embedded systems and capable to support the execution of components issued from the MDE: sub project Inflexion.

Usine Logicielle Architecture

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