Embedded Systems Engineering Standards Column vol 11.3 May 2003 Standards: Who cares? The insurance companies care. By Chris Hills

 

This is the start of a regular series on standards in the widest sense. Not just the BSI and ISO ones. There will be questions like do we need standards? Why aren't some of them in wider use? Why are some of them in use at all? Are engineering degree standards slipping? Why do they cost so much? (Degrees or standards J) Which standards should you use etc. Is ISO9000 worth the trouble? What happened to Tickit? Do you need C. Eng? Should de-facto standards become proper standards? Should standards contain patented material? How to get something to be a standard: or just to get a change to a current standard. I intend to look at all these things and anything else that comes up under the broad heading of standards

 

As a member of IEE Executive Council for the Embedded and Real Time PN, the Convener of the BSI panel for ISO C, a member of the C++ panel and a member of the MISRA-C working group I have a good overview of Standards and initiatives for the UK embedded industry.

 

Despite the list of "establishment" committees I am a pragmatic engineer who is more often regarded as a maverick than person who follows the establishment way. This column will be my own personal view and not those of any body, committee or employer I am associated with. It will be interesting to see how many I am still associated with in 6 months time :-)

 

Before I start on some of the topics in detail I want to mention some of the things that have happened in the standards world in the last few weeks. It has been somewhat hectic in the last three months.

 

During the first quarter of the year the MISRA-C Working Group have been meeting for 2 days a month, rather then the one day in three months, to complete the draft of the second edition. MISRA-C is a UK based automotive coding standard that has escaped to wide use around the world. The draft of the new rules known as MISRA-C2 are available for review. To sign up for the review go to www.misra.org.uk/misracv2eoi.pdf for the reviewers application form. This new edition is due for publication in July this year (we hope)and it looks to be on track. There will be more on MISRA-C another month but for now there is some information at www.misra.org.uk and a review of it at http://www.phaedsys.demon.co.uk under the MISRA button at the bottom of the page.

 

I got the email that the MISRA-C2 draft was available whilst attending the WG14 meeting. This is the ISO Working Group for the C language. One of the topics up for discussion was a TR (Technical Report) on extensions for embedded systems. This looked as maths for DSP, a standard method of memory space addressing and other items.

There is also WG21 for the C++ panel and they were meeting at the same place the following week. They meet twice a year around the world. This meeting was in Oxford UK In the mean time the UK panels (C and C++) meet 4 times a year at BSI in London. If any one is interested in taking part in either panel (or any other language) email me at Contact I will be looking at BSI /ISO standards in more depth later, also the role of BSI in "promoting" standards.

 

The WG panel consists of 20-30 people all of whom represent countries though most send a delegation of 2-4 people many are well known experts and some, like me, ordinary engineers. The side effect of having both together in the UK was that the ACCU ran their AGM and Conference at the same time and place. If you program in C, C++, EC++, Java, Python or even C# etc the ACCU will be of great use to you. See www.accu.org. One of the useful items for non-members is the book review section, currently around 3000 reviews written by (named) working engineers. Members get far more including some of the best programming journals around.

 

This has been a bit of a gallop to fit in an overview and mention the things that happened in the last month or two. I shall be expanding various topics each month.

 

 

Contact Details

Eur Ing Chris Hills BSc CEng MIET MBCS MIEEE  FRGS   FRSA is a Technical Specialist and can be reached at This Contact

 

Copyright Chris A Hills April 2003
The right of Chris A Hills to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988