Bringing UML sequence diagrams to systems engineers with Statemate MAGNUM 3.0

Citation

(2001), "Bringing UML sequence diagrams to systems engineers with Statemate MAGNUM 3.0", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 73 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2001.12773eab.007

Bringing UML sequence diagrams to systems engineers with Statemate MAGNUM 3.0

Bringing UML sequence diagrams to systems engineers with Statemate MAGNUM 3.0Keywords: I-Logix, Software, Systems engineering

I-Logix Inc., provider of enterprise solutions for embedded applications development, recently announced a major effort to bring concepts from the Unified Modeling Language™ (UML) into the systems engineering process through the availability of Statemate MAGNUM™ 3.0. Building on I-Logix's expansive experience with systems engineering and the UML, the company has added UML-compliant Sequence Diagrams to Statemate MAGNUM 3.0 to provide systems engineers with the most comprehensive systems engineering tool available.

According to I-Logix, using the Sequence Diagrams engineers can now easily capture and simulate system scenarios within an executable specification developed with Statemate MAGNUM and create test vectors for downstream testing on prototypes and the actual system. As a result, the overall architecture of new systems can reportedly be derived in an iterative process that explores a number of design alternatives that can then be easily communicated to the entire product development team.

I-Logix informs us that it also plans to introduce a bridge based on XMI, the XML-based Model Interchange standard, later this year that will allow Statemate MAGNUM users to export a Statemate MAGNUM model into the LTML or to read a LTML model into Statemate MAGNUM.

"I-Logix realises that the LTML is rapidly becoming the standard for complex software development, which has potential implications for systems engineers," said George LeBlanc, general manager for I-Logix's Systems and MicroCoptroller Division. "Statemate MAGNUM allows systems engineers to continue using the architectural block diagram and functional decomposition methods they need to define complete systems effectively while adding support for LTML notations, such as sequence diagrams and statecharts. This combination of traditional systems design notations and the software-centric UML notations is the most efficient way for these systems engineers to create specifications and then communicate them to customers, as well as to the downstream software, hardware, mechanical and the test engineers tasked with implementing the system they have specified."

With Statemate MAGNUM, systems engineers are said to capture the system requirements using sequence diagrams and then build an executable specification. Engineers leverage both the sequence diagrams and the executable specification to validate a design with their implementation team and customers. Statemate MAGNUM's formal specifications are believed to ensure that system engineers have a consistent and buildable specification long before personnel have been allocated to a project or the hardware is designed. It is said to allow these users to be unambiguous about what the system is and the features it supports, to ensure consistency among those features and to reduce the risk associated with new product development projects.

In order to make the flow from Statemate MAGNUM to the UML as seamless as possible, I-Logix has introduced – and will continue to introduce – UML concepts into Statemate MAGNUM while maintaining its widely recognised power as a systems engineering solution. New Statemate MAGNUM 3.0 claims the following features:

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  C-based Action Language. I-Logix has evolved the Statemate MAGNUM Action Language from a proprietary notation to be based on a subset of C. This reduces the learning curve for new users while still enabling the designs to be easily understood by non-technical reviewers.

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  Embedded rapid prototyper dspace support. This new release also adds support for the dspace rapid prototyping platforms to I-Logix's embedded rapid prototyper. This allows users to run prototypes of the system easily in the actual end-user environment, which ensures the specified behaviour is correct when running under real world conditions. In addition, this allows users to perform hardware-in-the-loop testing of the system to ensure that when the product is implemented it matches what was specified.

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  Embedded rapid prototyper CANOe API. In Statemate MAGNUM 3.0 I-Logix has added an API to the Embedded Rapid prototyper which allows users to generate a CANOe-compatible DLL from the Statemate MAGNUM specification. Now users can test the functionality and behaviour of an entire network of embedded control units (ECU) in a virtual domain, significantly reducing the risks and time associated with integration testing of the final system.

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  DOORS v5.1 and RTMv 5.3 support. Statemate MAGNUM 3.0 has an upgraded interface to the market-leading requirements trace and management (RTM) tools, which enables users to exploit the latest enhancements to Statemate MAGNUM while also leveraging the newest capabilities available in DOORs and RTM. In addition, these interfaces have been upgraded with the ability to link attributes in the Statemate MAGNUM model to the requirements defined in either a DOORS or RTM database, allowing users to track all the information in the specification to the requirements that they have been derived from, making it easy to understand the impact a requirement change will have on the specification.

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  Windows 2000 compatibility. Statemate MAGNUM 3.0 features support for Windows 2000, as well as continued support for Windows NT and Solaris.

Further details are available from I-Logix Europe. Tel: +44 (0) 1249 467614; Fax: +44 (0) 1249 467610; E-mail: beverley@ilogix.co.uk