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Development pace of new embedded projects often requires usage of model-based design process (MBD). More individuals start using MBD without previous experience with tools and new processes. Matlab/Simulink/Stateflow is a common tool that is used in control applications in automotive and airspace industries. Because of its complexity, the tool has a steep learning curve. Therefore, it is vitally important to set the MBD environment that allows persons to develop real-life projects even without a deep knowledge of the tool. The quality of the product should not be compromised and the development time should not be extended due to the initial lack of knowledge of the tool by the developers. The shifting to MBD leads to changes of roles and responsibilities of algorithm designers and software implementers. This shift is due to ability of creating of efficient production code by code generators.

Data dictionaries in embedded automotive applications are used for storing data elements and definitions supporting functional and software development. A robust model-based development process should be driven by a data dictionary that can interact with tools supporting a model-based environment and provide a linkage between different stages of the development process. A data dictionary could significantly increase automation of the modeling, validation and autocoding stages of the process. Using a data dictionary in model-based development implies additional requirements to the Dictionary compared to the traditional non-model development process. This paper describes the usage of a data dictionary in different stages of the model-based development process. It specifies the set of major requirements for the data dictionary and offers the possible implementation of these requirements based on a data dictionary developed by Delphi.

Since the end of the 1990s, model-based development processes have increasingly been adopted for the development of automotive embedded control software. One of the main goals of this approach is a reduction of project development time. This reduction is achieved through the use of executable modeling and autocoding. Due to the current constraints for a majority of embedded controllers on microprocessor memory and throughput, efficient production-quality code can not be generated from an executable model with the push of a button. The autocoding process requires manual setting of the software properties for the model's blocks and components by a software professional. Once the code is generated, code verification is needed. Although in many cases autocode generation and verification stages take less time to execute as compared to handcoding techniques, they still require substantial time to perform.

Automatic code generation is an established technology in automotive and aerospace industries that is also adopted in commercial vehicle embedded software development. Code generation brings the productivity gains of model-based algorithm design to the next stage of the process – production software development. The technology has matured to the point where it satisfies most technical and usability requirements and the success of code generation depends on judicious deployment, efficient work practices and acceptance by all users involved. It has been demonstrated that model-based software development and code generation in particular can shorten development cycles while staying true to the requirements and maintaining software quality through multiple algorithm iterations. These gains, though, only come as a result of careful combination of tools and methods. This paper discusses solutions to common organizational and technical challenges of model-based software development.

Model-based systems development relies upon the concept of an executable specification. A survey of published literature shows a wide range of definitions for executable specifications [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10]. In this paper, we attempt to codify the essential starting elements for a complete executable specification-based design flow. A complete executable specification that includes a functional model as well as test cases, in addition to a traditional prose document, is needed to transfer requirements from a customer to a supplier, or from a systems engineer to electrical hardware and software engineers. In the complete form demonstrated here, sub-components of a functionally-decomposed system manifest as modular reuse blocks suitable for publication in functional libraries. The overarching definition provided by product architecture and by software architecture must also be harmoniously integrated with design and implementation.