Automotive Ignition System Diagram

Automotive Ignition System Diagram

Automotive Starting System Diagram

Automotive Starting System Diagram

Familiarize Gasoline Engine

Automotive Gasoline Engine

The gas engine is one of the wonders of the 19th century. Now, within three years of the 20th century, it is a novel machine, eagerly sought by many people. It is thought by people who have not studied its morality that it is a steam-engine, using gas or gasoline as petroleum for the function of making steam. This is invalid. Gas and gasoline in specific proportion with air are likely to explode substance. The outgoing force consequential from explosion of these materials in the cylinder is the force that is substituted for the expansive force of steam. Hence, due to the economy of this method as a means of deriving power, the steam engine and boiler are fast disappearing, and the Gas Engine is captivating their place for small power.

It is not commonly known that the commencement of the gas engine for the production of motive power antedates that of the steam engine. Yet such is the case. It was not until the year 1744 that James Watt ran his first successful steam engine at the Soho Works, Birmingham, England, while Huyghens, Papin and other scientists had produced power in the seventeenth century by the explosion of chemicals and the expansive force of heated vapors. But the mechanical difficulties proved too great, and so little was known in that age of economical methods of producing gas as fuel for the production of heat, that when the apparently more simple method of using the expansive force of steam produced by the desertion of water by heat produced by the combustion of coal or wood was discovered, and Watt constructed his engine for utilizing steam, all further efforts in the direction of producing power by other heated vapors were suspended. For a century and a half the intelligence and genius of the world have been expended in improving the steam engine, until it is now conceded that it is as perfect as human effort can make it. No further economy in producing power by this method can be proficient. After careful and clever tests by experts with the best instruments made at the present day, it is generally admitted that what is now deemed the perfect steam engine does not convert more than 10 per cent of the heat efficiency into indicated work, and that usual engines and boilers do not apprehend over 4 per cent.

The gas engine is one of the wonders of the 19th century. Now, within three years of the 20th century, it is a novel machine, eagerly sought by many people. It is thought by people who have not studied its morality that it is a steam-engine, using gas or gasoline as petroleum for the function of making steam. This is invalid. Gas and gasoline in specific proportion with air are likely to explode substance.

The outgoing force consequential from explosion of these materials in the cylinder is the force that is substituted for the expansive force of steam. Hence, due to the economy of this method as a means of deriving power, the steam engine and boiler are fast disappearing, and the Gas Engine is captivating their place for small power.

It is not commonly known that the commencement of the gas engine for the production of motive power antedates that of the steam engine. Yet such is the case. It was not until the year 1744 that James Watt ran his first successful steam engine at the Soho Works, Birmingham, England, while Huyghens, Papin and other scientists had produced power in the seventeenth century by the explosion of chemicals and the expansive force of heated vapors. But the mechanical difficulties proved too great, and so little was known in that age of economical methods of producing gas as fuel for the production of heat, that when the apparently more simple method of using the expansive force of steam produced by the desertion of water by heat produced by the combustion of coal or wood was discovered, and Watt constructed his engine for utilizing steam, all further efforts in the direction of producing power by other heated vapors were suspended. For a century and a half the intelligence and genius of the world have been expended in improving the steam engine, until it is now conceded that it is as perfect as human effort can make it. No further economy in producing power by this method can be proficient.

After careful and clever tests by experts with the best instruments made at the present day, it is generally admitted that what is now deemed the perfect steam engine does not convert more than 10 per cent of the heat efficiency into indicated work, and that usual engines and boilers do not apprehend over 4 per cent.

Familiarize Diesel Fuel Engine

Automotive Diesel Fuel Engine

A diesel engine (also recognized as a compression-ignition engineand every now and then capitalized as Diesel engine) is an inside ignitionengine that uses the heat of compression to commence ignition to burn the fuel,which is injected into the combustion chamber during the final stage ofcompression. This is in compare to spark-ignition engines such as a petrolengine (gasoline engine) or gas engine (using a gaseous fuel as opposed togasoline), which uses a spark plug to ignite an air-fuel blend. The dieselengine is modeled on the Diesel cycle. The engine and thermodynamic cycle wereboth developed by Rudolf Diesel in 1897.

The diesel engine has the highest thermalefficiency of any regular internal or external combustion engine due to itsvery high compression ratio. Low-speed diesel engines (as used in ships andother applications where overall engine load is relatively unimportant) oftenhave a thermal efficiency which exceeds 50 percent.

Mio Automatic

New Yamaha Mio Automatic

New Generation model is packed with light-commuter functions.
Yamaha MIO, with its slim and yet imposing body, is a light city commuter that delivers agile driving performance and excellent convenience. Thanks to its air-cooled 4 cycle SOHC 2 valve single cylinder CVT engine mounted on a newly designed pipe frame, it fulfills our aim to developing a "vehicle that is fun to ride" for our target customers, teenagers and the young casual segment. We designed this model for excellent handling ease and a sense of acceleration which were not available in its predecessor.

SPECIFICATIONS

Over length x Width x Height - 1,820 mm x 675 mm x 1,050 mm
Seat Height - 745 mm
Wheel Base - 1,240 mm
Minimum Ground Clearance - 130 mm
Dry (without oil and fuel) / Wet (with oil and full fuel tank) - 92 kg / 95 kg
Engine Type - Forced air cooled 4 stroke, SOHC, 2 valve
Cylinder Arrangement - Single Cylinder
Displacement - 113 cubicCM
Bore and Stroke - 50.0 mm x 57.9 mm
Compression Ratio - 8.8:1
Max Horse Power - 5.98 kW (8000 r/min)
Max Torque - 7.53 N-m (6500 r/min)
Starting System - Electric Starter and Kick
Lubrication - Wet Sump
Engine Oil Capacity - 0.9 L
Fuel Tank Capacity - 3.7 L
Carburetor - NCV24
Ignition System - DC-CDI
Primary / Secondary Reduction Ratio - 3.133 / 3.231
Clutch - Dry, centrifugal automatic, Coil spring
Transmission - V belt automatic
Gear Ratio - 2.399 - 0.829
Frame Type - Steel tube underbone
Caster Angle / Trail - 26.5 degree / 100 mm
Tire Sizes - Front 70/90 14M/C 34P
                  Rear 80/90 14M/C 40P
Brake - Front / Rear - Single Disc / Drum
Suspension - Front / Rear - Telescopic Fork / Unit Swing
Headlight - 12v, 32/32w x 1

Nouvo Z Automatic

Nouvo Z Automatic

The NOUVO, which was born in 2002 to fulfill our mission of creating "ASEAN's Best Commuter," has reached new heights.
With its quality finishing and large 16 inch wheels, the new NOUVO for the filipino market will deliver excellent driving performance. While inheriting many of the features of its predecessor, it receives engine upgrades, a new rear suspension, and a futuristic new design. These and many other refinements enhance the new NOUVO's potential as ASEAN's Best Commuter. This is a very attractive product indeed.

SPECIFICATIONS

Overall length x width x height - 1,935 mm x 675 mm x 1,990 mm
Seat Height - 770 mm
Wheel Base - 1,280 mm
Minimum Ground Clearance - 135 mm
Dry (without oil and fuel) / Wet (with oil and fuel) - 103 kg / 108 kg
Engine Type - Forced air cooled 4 stroke, SOHC, 2 valve
Cylinder Arrangement - Single Cylinder
Displacement - 113 cubicCM
Bore and Stroke - 50.0 mm x 57.9 mm
Compression Ratio - 8.8:1
Max Horse Power - 6.54 kW (8000 r/min)
Max Torque - 8.62 N-m (7000 r/min)
Starting System - Electric starter and Kick
Lubrication System - Wet sump
Engine Oil Capacity - 0.9 L
Fuel Tank Capacity - 4.8 L
Carburetor - BS25
Ignition System - DC - CDI
Primary / Secondary Reduction Ratio - 3.133 / 3.583
Clutch - Dry, centrifugal automatic, Coil spring
Transmission - V belt automatic
Gear Ratio - 2.399 - 0.829
Frame - Steel tube underbone
Caster Angle / Trail - 25 degree / 112 mm
Tire Sizes - Front - 70/90 16 36P
                  Rear - 80/90 16 43P
Brake Front and Rear - Single Disc / Drum
Suspension Front and Rear - Telescopic Fork / Unit Swing
Headlight - 12v, 25/25w, x2

Yamaha Raider R150

Yamaha Suzuki Motor Raider R150

 Suzuki raider R150 revolutionizes itself as it gives the rider one step closer to riding a true Suzuki GSX-R.
History repeats itself as the new Suzuki Raider emerges far ahead of the competition as the nation's top-class sporty underbone motorcycle, the leader of the pack.

GSX-R INSPIRED DESIGN
Inheriting its design from the GSX-R Lineage, the new Suzuki Raider R150 boasts of a new headlight design, further developing the original GSX-R headlight concept of the previous model. Along with that important features and its new body coolworks, comes with a new seat contour and new muffler design. It comes with the ECO or POWER Mode with a bright shift timing light indicator for that easier shift timing. And the enhanced tachometer backlight improves tachometer visibility.
 
SUPERIOR AND RELIABLE DOUBLE OVER CAMSHAFT, 4 VALVE, 6 SPEED, 150CC ENGINE
It will always give that class-leading speed, power, and torque output because of its advanced engine technology. It is set to give class-leading overall engine performance that will surely stand out and lead the competition.
THE LEADER OF THE PACK, REBORN!

SPECIFICATION

Engine Type - Twincam 4 valve, 4 stroke
Bore X Stroke - 62.0 mm x 48.8 mm
Displacement - 147.3 cc
Compression Ratio - 10.2:1
Carburetor - Mikuni BS 26-187
Ignition - DC - CDI (DIGITAL)
Starting - Electric and Kick
Lubrication - SALCS (Suzuki Advanced Lubrication and Cooling System)
Transmission - Clutch - Hydraulic with Multi Layer Gear - 6 speed constant mesh (1 down 5 up)
Suspension - Front - Telescopic Shock Up Rear - Swingarm with mono shock up
Tires - Front - 70/90 - 17 38P Rear - 80/90 - 17 44P
Brakes / Sizes - Front - Disc Rear - Disc
Fuel Capacity - 4.9L
Overall Length - 1,940 mm
Overall Width - 652 mm
Overall Height - 941 mm
Wheel - Mag Wheel
Ground Clearance - 135 mm
Seat Height - 760 mm
Dry Weight - 106 kg 

 

IT talents in Sweden

For my Swedish readers:

Skill har skickat ut enkäten till studenter vid samtliga svenska lärosäten som har IT-utbildningar. 1140 IT-talanger har besvarat enkäten och det är deras svar som ligger till grund för denna rapport. Av de som har svarat är 20% kvinnor och 80% män. IT-talangerna är 27 år i snitt och åldersspridningen är mellan 19 och 54 år.

Improving quality with well-written requirements

I discussed with a colleague about how to improve specifications and we agreed that one of the actions that would yield quality improvements with very little investment was to educate people in our organisation on how to write good requirements.
Unfortunately such a course is not available internally at Volvo Cars (don't ask me why). But a search found some useful pages that could serve as an introduction:

• The Story of the Paperclip: Writing Good Functional Requirements from StartupCTO
• Writing Good Requirements – The Big Ten Rules from Tyner Blain
• Writing good requirements is a lot like writing good code by Jim Heumann, IBM
• Writing Good Requirements (A Requirements Working Group Information Report)
• SMART Requirements by Mike Mannion and Barry Keepence

Is software engineering immature?

Is software engineering an "immature" engineering discipline? I have often heard this both in presentations and in reading, for example SEMAT states on the homepage:

"Software engineering is gravely hampered today by immature practices."

If I draw parallels between software engineering and civil engineering (arguably the most mature engineering discipline) my spontaneous conclusion was: Yes, software engineering seems to be more like how cathedrals were built in medieval times. The construction of them were based on rules of thumb and the practical skills and experience of architects and stone masons instead of the type of engineering practices taught at universities today. Interestingly enough, one can still see the "successful" cathedrals still standing several centuries later. But it would have been impossible for the architect of  Lund Cathedral to build something like the nearby Turning Torso. So the engineering in civil engineering has certainly "matured".
But where is software engineering failing? Everyone has heard of software projects running over time, over budget or have not been used as intended (or not used at all). But wait a minute! Exactly the same thing is common within civil engineering as well. There are many examples from a single contractor renovating a small house up to world known buildings such as the Sydney Opera House:

"The original cost estimate in 1957 was £3,500,000 ($7 million). The original completion date set by the government was 26 January 1963 (Australia Day).[16] Thus, the project was completed ten years late and over-budget by more than fourteen times."

So in this respect software engineering is as immature as other engineering disciplines.
So what is the fuss about? I agree that there is no consensus in the software community on how to do the equivalence of structural mechanics calculations or stress tests. Are we more hampered by this lack of consensus on how to do engineering tasks than by the difficulty to run large projects, which seem to be common to other engineering disciplines?

Available infotainment platforms

I have previously written about various platforms for infotainment systems. I also had a slide about it in my presentation on Lindholmen Software Development day, where my point was to say that it is possible to use either a commercial platform, such as Windows Embedded Automotive or an open source such as Meego. It is a business decisions which way an OEM wants to go, not a technical.

I have probaly missed some, but here is a list of infotainment platforms available today for an OEM to build an in-vehicle infotainment system on:

• Windows Embedded Automotive, used for example in Ford's Sync.
• QNX Aviage
• Mecel Betula Suite - Automotive Bluetooth Platform
• Meego
• GENIVI, but there is little informaiton about the techical solition on the webiste. They will most likely utilise the Meego platform.
• Harman has an infotainment platform. They recenlty acquired AHA Mobile which probably will be integrated.
• There are alot of notices on using Android for in-vehicle infotainment if one searches the web, but I have not been able to find any open source software based on Android for in-vehicle use.
• Continental's Autolinq seems to be Android-based, but is not open source in the same sense as e.g. Meego, and apps must be approved (by Continental?) to be downloaded.
• Luxoft offers LUXnet, which is also Android-based, but I cannot find any information besides a press release on their homepage.

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Recurring architectural decisions

A lot of academic (and industrial) research is looking at architectural decisions. One of the ideas pursued is that by capturing and managing this type of information it can be reused. I guess in practice it means that if you need to make a similar decision in the future you can look at what you decided the last time. I myself also saw this as an appealing idea. But today it struck me that we really don't have recurring decisions when we work as architects at Volvo. I think that if we had there would no be any need of an architect at all.

What we do have is a long succession of architectural decisions, each with a new set of prerequisites. The task as an architect is to be able to extrapolate from what has been done previously and still maintain some sort of conceptual integrity. To preserve the "feel" or "vision" of the architecture while still fulfilling necessary functional and quality requirements (including cost) and operate within the constraints given by for example our organisation and what is available/possible form suppliers.

Software testing

I have to admit it, I suck at software testing. I do believe in my naive notion of test-driven design, i.e. write the tests first and the program later. My problem is that I just don't have the skills of programming test cases.
Example: I wrote about the "walking skeleton" design principle some days ago.One could write a suitable set of test cases to ensure that the skeleton, with it's various units, always walks. The tests should automatically run before you check in more elaborate units, with more features in them. If the unit doesn't pass you know that you will have integration problems.

There are a lot of resources on testing out there, for example I got an introduction on creating JUnit test cases for Java programs from a colleague. Since I'm trying to learn Erlang I should probably look into EUNIT.
You should also read the blog thoughts from the test eye.

I started working with system integration testing at Volvo Cars many years ago. I learned the basics of test planning, writing test cases and report test results then. Probably very outdated since both it was ten years ago and since the automotive industry has never been on the cutting edge of software development practices. We still have a notion that a specification should be written so that it can easily be tested:

"This easily results in requirements being quantified and often in a contractual style, instead of describing the real needs and desires."

There are many other ways of Synthesizing Test Ideas!

So if experts on testing are open to the notion of having specifications focusing on understanding and real needs, why are we still clinging to contractual requirements ? Is it because of so much of the coding is outsourced in the autotmotive industry?

If one aspires to be a software architect I think working with verification & validation (testing) is a good starting point. You learn a lot about good, and bad, design when you are exposed to the errors and unintended behaviour in a system and the effects they have.

Architectural modelling

To have a more formal definition of what I mean when talking about modelling an architecture (summarised from to IEEE 1471):

An architectural description is organized into one or more views.
A view may consist of one or more architectural models. Each such architectural model is developed using the methods established by its associated architectural viewpoint. An architectural model may participate in more than one view.
The viewpoint determines the languages (including notations, model, or product types) to be used to describe the view, and any associated modelling methods or analysis techniques to be applied to these representations of the view.

I am not against using models to represent architectural views, but there are some fallacies that often seem to happen when using various modelling approaches in architecture descriptions.

• The purpose of the architecture model is unclear (in 1471-terminology: It is not obvious what concerns the model addresses). UML is especially problematic since it provides notation that can be used for so many purposes. Read John Daniels paper Modeling with a Sense of Purpose as an introduction.
• Everything is modelled to the same level of detail. Not everything is equally important to know. For some parts of the system it is important for the architecture (and realisation of qualities) to know the details, for other parts it is not.
• Every part of the system must be represented in the architecture, for example if every class must be traceable from some element in the architecture. This could even be a rule of the architecture, "if it is not explicitly allowed it is forbidden". This reeks very much of waterfall mindset with the architects doing much of the design before any developers get involved. I think it is presumptuous  of the architects to claim to know everything that needs to be implemented.
• Modelling tools always demands a precision in notation, which is not always desirable when sketching an architecture. You cannot model "sort of a class", or "could be a function" when using a tool, which is possible on a whiteboard or a napkin. In a tool it has to be a class, a function or a package, not something in-between.

Presentations from Lindholmen Software Development Day 2010

All presentations form the Lindholmen Software Development Day 2010 are now up on the web site. I know we were filmed as well, but I don't know when they are finished editing.

"Start with a Walking Skeleton"

I try to explain to my students that they should start with structure before programming any features. Get the OS to run with some reasonable tasks, exchange some information/messages/... between sub-systems or processes, etc.
There seems to be a proper term for this: Start with a Walking Skeleton. Apparently the term originates with Alistair Cockburn. It is often used in conjunction with the Incremental Architecture pattern.
I feel rather stupid of not knowing what others had done before, but at least I know of the concepts...

It says that this is a useful strategy for large systems. I think it is quite useful for small systems as well, especially if you are not very familiar with the features to be developed. A walking skeleton allows you to try different things in a running platform and with decent version control you can always reverse to something that is running, even if it has little customer value. And the effort of making the skeleton work is never wasted.

Ranking of Software Engineering Journals

I got a link to a ranking of the top Software Engineering Journals from my colleague Robert Feldt.
This is based on how prestigious these journals are in the scientific community based on some bibliometric index. But I would also like to see a similar ranking of how prestigious a journal is in the community of practitioners. Would it be possible to identify an index for that?

ICES-INCOSE Architecting Seminar - presentations now on-line

The material from the ICES-INCOSE-seminar: Architecting Embedded Systems is now available.
There is also a summary of of the day, including the ending panel debate, which I personally found very interesting.

More on quality attributes

Not so long ago I wrote about quality attributes. A friend on facebook gave a tip about a blog post on Software Quality Characteristics 1.0. The bloggers claim it is "the perhaps most powerful public two-page document in the history of software testing." I don't know about that but it sure is a useful document.

Trends and challenges in architecting embedded systems

Architecting is not even a proper word (I even heard someone at SPLC suggest all papers with architecting in the title should be rejected) , but is quite popular nevertheless. I think it has to do with Swedish allows you to construct a verb from just any noun, and still making sense....

I was in Stockholm to talk about architecting automotive software at an ICES-INCOSE seminar. You can find the slides from the other presenters (and mine in PDF) at the ICES homepage.
Staffan Persson is an architect from Scania and he presented a very interesting view on architecting in lean organisations (an introduction by Staffan can be found in Lean Magazine #5).

The finishing panel debate was interesting. I don't know if the notes from that will be published on the site, but I have a few reflections when thinking about it afterwards:

• One trait of a good architect is to freely move between different levels of abstraction. An architect needs to see the whole picture all the time, but he also needs to be able to dive down into details, "the devil is in the details".
• You can teach, and learn, fundamental knowledge for an architect, such expressing quality attributes, be familiar with architectural styles and patterns, know architecture platforms such as AUTOSAR or .NET, and being able to express designs in various views etc. But there are also another set of key skills that are very hard to teach, such as understanding the company culture (the common value ground), earn respect, know not only what technical parts that are affected by various decisions, but also who. So it would be difficult to move form one organisation to another an be productive as an architect.
• An architect needs to be comfortable with uncertainty. I know I am not, and this is one of my weaker points as an architect. And how do you assure other stakeholders that one should not make a decision now since we don't know enough?

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Architecture for small systems?

It is Friday afternoon and I'm allowed to have some wild ideas...

After a long e-mail conversation with one student of appropriate architectural styles to use in a project course I realised that his ending comment is spot on:

I think the course and it's literature are focused on large systems and seeing that we are new to this, especially with a new language in parallel, its difficult to not apply what we learn during the course.

In my opinion the patterns covered in the book left me half way with the idea that most architectures could fit into a pattern, within its own right.

I have been too blind when I teach, and not even my professional experience helped me to identify the problem:

Most (all) literature about architecture teaches solutions for big systems.

Is there a niche for information on how to architect small systems? Small in the sense of not having millions lines of code, or a large development team, or a long project. I know that the agile manifesto states that that one of twelve important principles are

The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

But do a google search on "agile architecture emerge" and see what comes up, a lot of interesting reading that suggest that the issue is not that simple.

A lot of software systems are small, from a bittorrent client (the student project) to the software in the door control unit in a car, to a mobile app. And yet they would all benefit of having some though about what they must meet for non-functional needs that is addressed by a (simple) architecture. Should I write a book on architecting small systems? So that a team member is better prepared when he or she participates in a small project where the architecture "emerges"? You don't need to be an architect to benefit from doing thinking at an architectural "level".

Quality attribute scenarios

Defining a quality attribute, a.k.a. non-functional requirement, is not easy. I know since i did that for a new platform at Volvo. When the verification and validation group comes back and says that it is not possible to verify this as a requirement I can only assume that I did not do a good enough job. But I have to agree with what George Fairbanks wrote in his blog:

Before you get too excited, you should know it’s easier to write these for quantitatively measurable qualities (e.g., throughput, latency) and harder for softer qualities (e.g., modifiability, usability).

There are two recent books that have a more agile approach to architecting: Lean Software Architecture by Coplien and Bjørnvig, and George Fairbanks' Just Enough Software Architecture: A Risk-Driven Approach. Unfortunately the latter isn't available in any Swedish internet bookstore, but as soon as I get hold of them I will post a review, as I have reviewed other books on software architecture.

Lindholmen software development day 2010

I held a presentation with the ambitious title The future of automotive software engineering at this years Lindholmen software development day.
The whole event was filmed so you can watch clips from me and the other presenters giving our talks when they are published (somewhere in the near future). Until then you can view my slides below, including the long list of references.

Architects as managers and leaders?

It is not often I write about management here, in spite of the title of the blog: "Managing..."'

I do believe that architects should not be people managers, at least not simultaneously.
However they should be leaders. An architect should have a vision of what he wants to accomplish and should lead by example. If the architect is successful it seemed like he did not do anything and everything was accomplished jointly by the developers, so don't expect too much credit as a leader...

Back to management: A former student of mine wrote about the difference between good and great companies to work for in his blog and directed me to this series of blog articles:12 Things Good Bosses Believe from Harvard Business Review.

Project presentation

I presented my project at the yearly Volvo Industrial PhD program conference last week.

How attractive it is to work as a software architect...

A colleague sent me this link from CNN Money about how attractive it is to work as a software architect. Go figure...

Hidden leaves

Philippe Kruchten wrote a very entertaining interpretation of Tao Te Ching from the perspective of an software architect. But besides being entertaining it has some very good insights into the nature of an architect, like the following:

The architect doesn't talk, she acts.
When this is done,
the team says, "Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!"

Personally I'm more familiar with Japanese texts (more than 20 years of budo training) so I thought of interpreting the Hagakure with the same perspective (you can find a translation to English of the original text here).

Among the maxims on the architect's wall there was this one: "Matters of great concern should be treated lightly." A senior developer commented "Matters of small concern should be treated seriously." In one's project there should not be more than two or three matters of what one could call great concern. If these are deliberated upon during ordinary times, they can be understood. Thinking about things previously and then handling them lightly when the time comes is what this is all about. To face a problem and solve it lightly is difficult if you are not prepared beforehand , and there will always be uncertainty in hitting your mark. However, if the foundation is laid previously, you can think of the saying, "Matters of great concern should be treated lightly," as your own basis for action. (1st chapter, p. 33)

According to a senior developer, even a poor programmer will become substantial in the art of writing code if he studies by imitating a good model and puts forth effort. An architect should become substantial too, if he takes a good architect as his model. (1st chapter, p. 40)

The proper manner of architecting is nothing other than not being careless, but in this way one's design will be sluggish and stiff. One should go beyond this and depart from the norm. This principle applies to all things. (1st chapter, p. 48).

In carefully scrutinising the projects of the past, we find that there are many different opinions about them, and that there are some things that are quite unclear. It is better to regard such things as unknowable. An architect once said, "As for the things we don't understand, there are ways of understanding them. Furthermore, there are some things we understand just naturally, and again some that we can't understand no matter how hard we try. This is interesting."
This is very profound. It is natural that one cannot understand deep and hidden things. Those things that are easily understood are rather shallow. (1st chapter, p. 69)

On plagiarism and referencing

In the architecture course I'm involved in several groups failed the hand-ins due to insufficient referencing when using material from other sources. In academic writing it is allowed, and even encouraged, to base your writing on data from other sources so this in itself is not wrong, but it must be done according to strict academic standards
Worst case: Incorrect or omitted references is plagiarism, which is a serious academic crime that can lead to suspension from the university.

We will arrange a workshop for all 2nd year students on Wednesday 12 October 11:00 since this is a vital skill in all courses and the thesis projects. But in the meantime I suggested they should take a look at the following introductory material:

• A crazy Norwegian introduction to the subject
• A website from the same university on searching and writing academic papers
• Read especially about referencing
• A short (15 min) hands-on video lecture on referencing

The students don't need to use any specific style of references (Harvard, IEEE, APA, Chicago, etc) as long as they are consistent.

Seminar:Trends and challenges in architecting embedded systems

I will be talking at a seminar at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm 4 November: Trends and challenges in architecting embedded systems.
Besides Martin Törngren from KTH and Jörgen Hansson from Chalmers there will be speakers from Ericsson, Saab Aerospace, Semcon EIS, Scania, and myself...

InfoQ: Model-Driven Development: Where are the Successes?

I found a good blog post about more experiences onmodel-driven deleopment at InfoQ: Model-Driven Development: Where are the Successes?. Read it and the articles mentioned.

I have also read through a summary of the study of Sascha Kirstan which was very interesting.Unfotrunatley i don't know if it is avaibale on thenet yet. However both he and Jon Whittle clearly stated that in practice the advantages with model based develoipment are not so much efficiency as quality. In practice the efficiency gains tend to be around 20-30%, not 3-5 times as one can hear among certain the evangelists. And the quality gains are in the same order.
But reducing the number of faults and errors with 20% impresses me more than reducing development costs with 20%.

What is a model?

My previous post got me thinking about what a model is and why we model. I think everybody agrees that a text specification written in Word is not a model, while something in UML is.

The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines a model as

A representation of something, either as a physical object which is usually smaller than the real object, or as a simple description of the object which might be used in calculations.

I like the informal definition I heard from Jon Whittle last week: A model is an abstraction of the real thing for a specific purpose. However with this definition even a specification document written in Word will be a model and I don't think that makes sense.
Mellor et al. defines a model (Ludewig defines even more formal criteria):

A model is a coherent set of formal elements describing something (for example, a system, bank, phone, or train) built for some purpose that is amenable to a particular form of analysis, such as...

With this definition it is quite easy to exclude a Word document as a model, since it isn't composed of formal elements. It can incorporate diagrams based on a model, e.g. a class diagram from an UML model, but not the model itself.

In addition to this there should be a purpose with the model. John Daniels identifies three different types of models, each with a different purpose:

• Conceptual model
• Specification model
• Implementation model

When reading the article it is obvious that just by stating one has a UML model or a Simulink model really does not say anything about the purpose. What I am curios about is if one is using the same model for different purposes? Is it possible to use a model for completely different purposes with any degree of efficiency and quality? I am not talking about a transformation from one model to another, for example code generation or MDA. Do you use the same Simulink model for both conceptually understand the problem, specify properties of the solution and describe the implementation?

I had great help from my colleague Niklas Mellegård in his licentiate thesis Method and Tool Support for Automotive Software Engineering, which is defended on Thursday 30 September at 13:00 in room Torg 2, Patricia building, Lindholmen. Discussion leader will be Prof. Martin Törngren, Dept of Machine Design, Royal Institute of Technology.

Software quality attributes

I got the following e-mail from a student after discussing definitions and frameworks of quality attributes:

Hello,

It seems there are 2 main groups of ISO standards dealing with software quality:

1. a 4 part ISO 9126 standard (QA considered are reliability, usability, efficiency, maintainability, portability AND, actually, functionality)
2. second generation of ISO software quality standards referred to as SQuaRE (Software product Quality Requirements and Evaluation): ISO/IEC 25000:2005, ISO/IEC TR 25021:2007 and ISO/IEC TR 25060:2010.

I couldn't find any free copies of these standards, so we can't really use them.

Anyway, it would be interesting to get during the lectures some additional information about different quality attributes models out there (early McCall and Boehm models, FURPS, ISO models etc.).

I replied with this:

You are correct. You can't access the ISO standards (without paying).

• For a very soft introduction to quality attributes, read this: http://www.stellman-greene.com/2009/10/03/using-nonfunctional-requirements/
• An in-depth analysis of a few quality attributes are available at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/95tr021.cfm
• For a definition of terminology I suggest IEEE std 610.12, bit this covers much(!) more than just quality attributes. It is available at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/
• You can also read what the PhD students at Blekinge Technical University wrote down in a course about software quality: http://www.bth.se/tek/besq.nsf/pages/017bd879b7c9165dc12570680047aae2!OpenDocument
• And as usual, wikipedia is a good introduction, look at "software quality" or "FURPS" for example.

I think it will be a little too much to go into detail about different quality frameworks in this course, above they dedicated an entire course at PhD level to the subject.

Hope this helps,

Ulrik

Do you use model based development?

I heard an interesting keynote speech from Jon Whittle this morning with the title The Truth About Model-Driven Development: Who's doing it, how and why?
He presented some findings on experiences from using model-based development in industry from the EA-MDE project. I talked to him afterwards and there apparently had only been one automotive company in the study, and I personally think that the conclusions might have been different if they were more data from them. If you are working model-based in your company and want to participate in the study you can do so by answering the questionare on the project web site.
One benefit of model-based development which I expected to see in the study was that it allows domain experts to actually do implementation, for example can chassis control experts actually do code for use in ECUs.
Note: You can substitue model-based development with several other acronyms and Jon's study is still relevant; MDD, MBSE, MDA, ...

I find this study to be similar to what Sascha Kirstan is working on in the automotive industry. I participated in Sascha's study this spring and just got a report with preliminary results, which I haven't had the time to read yet. I sure hope these two researcher will look at each others result and see if they can corroborate their findings or if they are contradictions.

Jon concluded his talk with the top ten tips for companies wanting to adopt model-based development and here they are (but to truly utilise them you must know a lot more about the context where they were found):

1. Keep the domains (modelled, I assume) tight and narrow.
2. Target well known domains.
3. Put MDD on the critical path (he means that pilot projects never get sufficient attention and resources).
4. MDD works best form the ground up.
5. Be careful of gains that are offset elsewhere.
6. Don't obsess about code generation.
7. Not everyone can think abstractly.
8. Most projects fail at scale-up
9. Match tolls and processes to the way people think, not the other way around
10. Ok, there was only 9...

Why I don't like formal methods...

I know the title of this port is a bit controversial and with it I alienate a lot of researchers, even at my own department. But I will try to clarify my arguments and hope that someone can prove them to be wrong.

• To be more precise; it is not the formal methods in itself I dislike, but the prominence they seem to have at prestigious software engineering conferences. I think it is not at all in proportion to how well-used formal methods are among professional development.
• Formal methods are really attractive from a researchers perspective. You can use concepts as theorem, proof and deduction and other nice things. But nice is not the same as relevant.
• Even though I have heard about formal methods as one of the enablers to establish software engineering as a "real" engineering discipline for almost ten years I still don't think they are nearer being well-established now than then.
• Some claim that you can never be sure of the software unless you can prove properties about it, and I agree that presently formal methods are the only technique that promises to do so. But there is a lot of successful software out there which have not been proven.
• Specifications that fulfil the requirement of being interpreted formally are hard to write. Compare it to learn a new programming language and be proficient enough to use it without any side effects.
• I don't know if formal methods scale well. It is one thing to use it on a nice prototype system with 30 entities developed in your lab. It is another thing to use it on a system with 500 entities, many of these with quite varying quality in requirements and code.
• I still don't know of any that uses formal methods for real; i.e. as part of the normal way in products shipped to customers in business intent on making money. Not in one-shot attempts, pilot projects or by non-profit organisations.
  A search on google skolar of industrial+software+formal+methods list papers from the 90s as the top results. And these seem more to be arguments against what I claim above rather than actual reports of usage. I really would welcome examples.

Software product line engineering

Software product line engineering is apparently about modelling variants and achieving formalism in feature descriptions. This is the conclusion I make after attending some workshops and the first morning sessions at the 14th International Software Product Line Conference in Jeju, Korea.
I presented an interesting  paper together with Håkan from Scania of how architects work with maintaining and updating existing architectures over time in the automotive industry. And we did not get a single question!
Last year when I presented another case study everybody was interested in the case and wanted to hear more from industry, but this time it didn't seem to interest the audience.
I find it quite difficult to find venues to present research based on industrial experience and not theoretical examples.

Besides that, I find the notion of feature used in many presentations different from what I am used to. To me a feature is something which is discernible for the end user, same as the definition found in the original work here. For example an adaptive cruise control is a marketable feature in a vehicle. But if I would model that similar to feature modelling prevailing here the model would consist of an optional radar, a compulsory engine, compulsory brake, etc.This means a much higher degree of knowledge about the realisation of features.

Tacit knowledge

At the ECSA conference there was a lot of talk about tacit knowledge and the importance of tacit knowledge when architecting systems.
I completely agree that one thing that differs an experienced (and productive) architect from a fresh graduate is is the amount of tacit knowledge the former possess. However I thought that in the discussions at the conference there was some confusion of what is exactly meant by tacit knowledge.
On one hand there was the view that tacit knowledge was simply the architectural knowledge that was not documented, i.e. stuff that only resided in the peoples' heads. To improve the management of this is mostly a question of capturing it in the right form and with the best tools.
On the other hand one sees tacit knowledge is such knowledge which is difficult to express using language, which is the tradition I'm used to.
In order to capture the latter type of tacit knowledge it is not just a question of having the time to do so or the right tools. The difficult part is for the person having this knowledge to be able to formulate in in such a manner that he can express it.

Meego

I have previously written about GENIVI and Moblin in this blog. I have to confess that I haven't followed the progress of either initiative.

GENIVI seems to be progressing, there is a new report on Marketing Requirements with a summary publicly available. But for an open source project it does not seem to be very open. It is interesting to note that they see themselves as different compared to a Linux platform, at least commercially.

Moblin seems to have been replaced by Meego as the in-vehicle Linux platform, with backin from Intel and Nokia. Meego had it's first release for In-Vehicle Infotainment in August this year. If I understand it correctly you can download it and run it as a infotainment system already now if you like, though I have not tried this...

I still believe that technically GENIVI will build on Moblin, or now Meego, but I cannot find anything about that on their homepage.

The future of software architecture research?

There are two areas which I judge to be of great interest to the industry regarding architecture, and I see very little interest from academia

First, how much effort should be put into architecting? In industry there never are unlimited man-power and indefinite time plans. So how do you know that you have done enough architecting? Or did too many people working with the architecture for a too long time? Or when are the gains in putting another man-hour too small to make it worthwhile?

Second, how to define an architecture based on imperfect premises? In practice the architects never have the full picture. There might be requirements missing, stakeholders unavailable or implicit constraints. Similarly the architects themselves are no super-humans, there will be inconsistencies in what they do, things forgotten, lack of crucial knowledge or personal biases, all which cause an imperfect architecture.

Personally I think that these two areas are more important from an industrial viewpoint than further software architecture research on Architecture Description Languages, formal methods or Service Oriented Architectures (the latter may be contested, but I think I am not alone).

At the 4th European Conference on Software Architecture the workshop in imperfect architecture was cancelled, probably due to too little interest (I heard only 3 papers were submitted). On the other hand I found 7 papers when I scanned the LNCS proceedings which in their title relates to the subjects above.
I don't find this very promising. Eoin Woods had a similar conclusion on the state of software architecture research at his ECSA talk when talking about the relationship between code and other design information, such as architecture, where he thought the academic research and the industrial needs are diverging and not converging.

You can also read this related column from IEEE Software: The Top 10 Burning Research Questions from Practitioners. Especially #4 "Architecture and agile—how much design is enough for different classes of problem?" should get more attention at software architecture conferences.

A colleague of mine at Volvo had an interesting proposition: Since software engineering as a dsiciplin comes from the practitioners the research community wants to keep some distance, in contrast to the "fundamental" researchers in e.g. physics who would be enthusiastic if somebody is interested in applying their theories.

ECSA 2010 pt3

The conference had three interesting keynote speakers: Jan Bosch, Philippe Kruchten and Jim Webber.

It must be quite nice to be a keynote speaker, then you have the authority of making statements like "Control is an expensive illusion causing inefficiency in the system" (JB) or "When ever you hear Service-Oriented Architecture think of orange men in rubber suits coming to rescue you" (JW) without having to prove them scientifically. Convincing and entertaining statements nevertheless.
Philippe Kruchten's keynote was a summary of the tutorial he gave together with Paris Avgeriou. The slides for both are available on-line.