Embedded Systems Engineering Standards Column vol 12.2 March/April 2004 Standards: Odds and Ends?. By Chris Hills

 

I have to give the usual disclaimer that that these are my own personal views and not those of the ESE Editor and publisher. or those of my employer at the time..... I now work for Phaedrus Systems Ltd!

There is a 75% cut down version for print in ESE. The full one is on my web site at www.phaedsys.com Which you are now reading.

 

I had some interesting feedback on the last column about things moving out (and back) to the Far East and China, all of it anecdotal along with comments in an IEEE journal that there were problems in understanding between India and China. There have been some other pieces along similar lines to my column:-

Computer Consultant (Dec 03/ Jan 04) there is an item discussing the annual wage inflation in India of 30-50%! This is why the inexpensive software shops are either disappearing or using staff thwart may not be described as software engineers over here! It also went on to say that many outsourcing projects are not delivering either the saving they promised or in some cases delivering at all.

 

Electronics Weekly (#2121 28 Jan 2004) in the UK had a front-page item that said R&D was staying in the UK despite some production moving to the East. Even the IEE Review was commenting on the pitfalls of working in China. This mentioned doing software that only worked with certain combinations of chips to reduce the danger of copying.

 

It appears that the industry is slowly waking up to the fact that it is not quite as simple as the accountants' first thought. Something the engineers probably told them in the first place. So you have all been warned the Far East not going to do you any favours.

 

Getting back to standards the US IEEE are doing a CD "The IEEE Software Engineering Standards Collection," containing PDF's of a lot of useful standards. From their web site:-

 

Features: Completely new organization featuring new introductory material in HTML, VuSpec browser-based user interface with helpful related links, Convenient text search feature, 40 approved standards in PDF format. Includes complete text of the Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK). Includes the Software Engineering Code of Ethics. This product contains the following complete and approved IEEE Standards in PDF format:

 

610.12-1990, Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology;
730-2002, Standard for Software Quality Assurance Plans;
828-1998, Standard for Software Configuration Management Plans;
829-1998, Standard for Software Test Documentation;
830-1998, Recommended Practice for Software Requirements Specifications;
982.1-1988, Standard Dictionary of Measures to Produce Reliable Software;
1008-1987 (R1993), Standard for Software Unit Testing;
1012-1998, Standard for Software Verification and Validation;
1012a-1998, Supplement to Standard for Software Verification and Validation;
1016-1998, Recommended Practice for Software Design Descriptions;
1028-1997, Standard for Software Reviews;
1044-1993, Standard Classification for Software Anomalies;
1045-1992, Standard for Software Productivity Metrics;
1058-1998, Standard for Software Project Management Plans;
1061-1998, Standard for a Software Quality Metrics Methodology;
1062-1998, Recommended Practice for Software Acquisition;
1063-2001, Standard for Software User Documentation;
1074-1997, Standard for Developing Software Life Cycle Processes;
1175.1-2002, Guide for CASE Tool Interconnections - Classification and Description;
1219-1998, Standard for Software Maintenance;
1220-1998, Standard for the Application and Management of the Systems Engineering;
1228-1994, Standard for Software Safety Plans;
1233-1998, Guide for Developing System Requirements Specifications;
1320.1-1998, Standard for Functional Modeling Language-Syntax and Semantics for IDEF0;
1320.2-1998, Standard for Conceptual Modeling Language Syntax and Semantics...;
1362-1998, Guide for Information Technology-System Definition-Concept of Operations;
1420.1-1995, Standard for Information Technology-Software Reuse-Data Model for Reuse;
1420.1a-1996, Supplement to Standard for Information Technology-Software Reuse-Data;
1420.1b-1999, IEEE Trial-Use Supplement to Standard for Information;
1462-1998, Standard - Adoption of International Standard ISO/IEC 14102: 1995;
1465-1998, Standard - Adoption of International Standard ISO/IEC 12119: 1994(E);
1471-2000, Recommended Practice for Architectural Description of Software Intensive;
1490-1998, Guide - Adoption of PMI Standard - A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge;
1517-1999, IEEE Standard for Information Technology-Software Life Cycle Processes-Reuse; 1540-2001, Standard for Software Life Cycle Processes- Risk Management; 2001-2002, Recommended Practice for Internet Practices - Web Page Engineering;
14143.1-2000, Adoption of ISO/IEC 14143-1:1998 Information Technology-Software In addition, the following other standards also appear on this product CD:
IEEE/EIA 12207.0-1996, Industry Implementation of International Standard ISO/IEC 12207: 1995
IEEE/EIA 12207.1-1996, Industry Implementation of International Standard ISO/IEC 12207: 1995
IEEE/EIA 12207.2-1997, Industry Implementation of International Standard ISO/IEC 12207: 1995
That is quite a list of standards. The CD not cheap at 395USD (or 270USD for IEEE Members) but not expensive compared to many other options. It works out at 6.75USD which fir IEEE members, which I would think makes is an essential collection for US IEEE members. However how useful it is for UK and European engineers I am not sure. There will be BSI and ISO standards that are more relevant.

The link to it:- http://shop.ieee.org is a bit longer than it looks!

 

You may well ask what BSI http://www.bsi-global.com does in the UK… BSI prints standards on paper, loose leaf. As a Panel convener I can get electronic versions occasionally. This is of the published version not the committee drafts. The last one I got was C90. All 28megabytes of it! It was a PDF but it was all the pages scanned in as Tiffs! The worse thing was it was emailed to me at home when I still ran a 56K modem.

 

Note that many standards documents such as the embedded C proposals and new floating-point stuff are openly available on web sites. http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/wg14/ If you want to see what is going on with C (and C++, Posix/Linux, C# etc) this is the place to go. Among other things available on free download are the C99 Rational (i.e. the whys and wherefores.) the extensions to C for Embedded processors and many others.

 

I have mentioned changes to the floating-point model. At the moment all floating-point calculations are done using binary hardware. IBM are looking at doing floating point with decimal based hardware…. For information on this e see Mike Cowlishaw's pages at IBM http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/ In short IBM are going to do the hardware. Compiler vendors will support them so it is going to happen!

 

The other place for standards is Techstreet in the USA. http://www.techstreet.com They sell, at a reasonable cost most ANSI, ISO and IEC standards. You buy by credit card and download. They have the current C99 standard at 18USD but do not sell the C90 version that most of the world still references.

 

Whilst mentioning versions of the C standard… The ISO C committee decided that they would not release a new version of the standard until 2010 at the earliest. This is because of the speed (or lack of) of take up of the current C99 standard. Well it appears that after five years of C99 there are now only three or four compilers world wide that implement the current C 99 standard. So it looks like a decade between versions of the standard will be the norm.

 

Other useful thing happening is the ACCU conference in April. https://www.accu.org/conference/ This is one of the industries best kept secrets. The ACCU always has all the top names and charges less than half the usual rate of most conferences. This is an essential conference for C, C++ and Java programmers. DO take a look at it.

 

Why is it that UK Engineers and programmers don't go to shows and conferences? In Germany the Nuremberg show is packed. The small shows I went to in Munich always had lots of Engineers dropping in. It is the same in the US. In the UK the ACCU , BCS, IEE tried branch meetings but these are comparatively lightly attended. Hopefully more of you will make the effort to go to the Embedded Systems Show this year. It is at the NEC 13/14th October. There will be a lot more happening this year. It should be worth going to. Just to see what is happening and to network. I might even do one of these columns "live" and see if we can get a discussion going.

 

I am off to Germany to present at a conference on 61508 and MISRA-C. http://www.euroforum.de/conf/default.asp?pnr=P16337 This is looking at using C in various safety related areas, principally automotive. As has been said all along C is safe when correctly used with a proper Engineering process and the correct tools such as static analysis, coding standards and subsets.

The MISRA referred to is the first version of MISRA-C. We have made some decisions on C2, which I hope to be able to explain in the next column.

 

 

Author Details and contact

 

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  2003 -2008
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