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Software engineering practices and Simulink: bridging the gap

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Abstract

Although widely used in embedded systems design, Matlab/Simulink is not considered a state-of-the-art design environment by the software engineering community. This paper is aimed at improving design with Simulink from the software engineering perspective by developing automated support for the application of some traditional software engineering principles when developing with Simulink. We present four tools: the Signature Tool, the Reach/Coreach Tool, the Data Store Rescope Tool, and the Auto Layout Tool. The Signature Tool extracts the interface of a Simulink subsystem, enabling developers to better understand the implicit data flow in Simulink models and use it more effectively, while also producing useful documentation. The Data Store Rescope Tool improves modularity of Simulink models by properly scoping data stores, the Simulink equivalent of variables in traditional languages. The Reach/Coreach Tool highlights data and control dependencies in Simulink models, making them easier to understand. Also, the tool supports debugging, reverse-engineering, refactoring, and static analysis of the models. Finally, the Auto Layout Tool automatically improves the layout of Simulink models, reducing the effort developers invest in graphical layout to comply with modeling guidelines and improve readability of their models.

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Notes

  1. It might seem that the input and output signals of a block in Simulink are obvious from the block diagram; however, there is hidden data flow in Simulink not evident on the diagram as will be discussed in Sect. 2.

  2. A referenced model is a model referenced from another model using a Model block.

  3. At the beginning of a time step, if the IC input does not hold, the subsystem is not executed in that time step. If the IC input does hold, the subsystem gets executed, and then, if the cond input is true, the iterator executes the subsystem again. The iterations continue while cond input is true and the number of iterations is less than or equal to the Maximum number of iterations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. McMaster Centre for Software Certification, Department of Computing and Software, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    Vera Pantelic, Steven Postma, Mark Lawford, Monika Jaskolka, Bennett Mackenzie, Alexandre Korobkine, Marc Bender, Jeff Ong, Gordon Marks & Alan Wassyng

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  1. Vera Pantelic
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  2. Steven Postma
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  3. Mark Lawford
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  4. Monika Jaskolka
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  5. Bennett Mackenzie
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  6. Alexandre Korobkine
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  7. Marc Bender
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  8. Jeff Ong
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  9. Gordon Marks
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  10. Alan Wassyng
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Correspondence to Vera Pantelic.

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Pantelic, V., Postma, S., Lawford, M. et al. Software engineering practices and Simulink: bridging the gap. Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer 20, 95–117 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-017-0450-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-017-0450-9

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