Analysis Of Aspect-Oriented Technology And Its Application In The Development Of Software For Large-Scale Embedded System

Embedded system is increasingly used in the field of consumer electronics products, communication systems, vehicle control installations, remote sensing equipments, etc. Comparing with the development of PC software, higher requirements in technical skill and performance, and more difficulties in modification and maintenance, and lower efficiency are the peculiarity of developing embedded system. In addition, with the rapid popularization of Internet, not only PC but also many embedded systems are required to connect with network. One of the products with common interests is the vending machine, which are used for selling the tangible goods with good performance against shock and pressure. The vending machine is also confronted with the above-mentioned problem in using the equipment of large scale embedded system. It is urged to improve the efficiency of the software development, shorten the development cycle, improve the quality of software for vending machine, and to match all the future development demands of the vending machine. A lot of problems still exist in the software product and software development process even though a lot of technologies and means were taken, such as low software modularity, unclear architecture hierarchy, bad maintainability, low development efficiency.Taking the development of control software for vending machine as application background, the solution for improving the software product and development process of the large-scale embedded system was researched for three purposes: 1) Offer an embedded system development platform in order that the large-scale embedded system can be connected to the network easily. 2) Improve the quality of software by modifying the architecture of the software. 3) Give the software development process with high visualability that can be used in entire process from analysis to test. To achieve the above-mentioned aims, the rationalization of control software product and the software development process of vending machine were obtained by applying AOT to the control software development of the vending machine. The main results of our research are outlined as follows.1. An embedded system development platform based on Java technology was proposed.2. Aspect-Oriented software architecture model for embedded software was proposed.3. The description method of Aspect Oriented (AO) system by using the architecture model based on UML and formal method were proposed respectively.4. The method of design and realization of key point for AO software was researched.5. An unified process of Aspect-Oriented software development was designed to guide the software development strictly. The main work of this work is outlined as follows.1. An introduction to the development history, the principle and current state of the development of AOT was given. The feature and the challenge to face of the embedded software system were summarized. By analyzing the problem in the software for large-scale embedded system, the research background and result of this paper were clarified.2. According to AO view point, the essence of the characteristic of the development platform is also some kind of crosscutting concern. To achieve the separation of this concern, an embedded system development platform based on Java technology was proposed. The software construction and hardware construction, the function, key technology and feature of this platform were discussed. It was proved that by using this platform it becomes easy to connet the embedded system to network and to make expansion to function of embedded system.3. The problems and the weak points of traditional software architecture were analyzed, and the basic component, the design principle, and commonground for designing embedded software were discussed in detail. An Aspect-Oriented software architecture model for embedded sofware was proposed and the design process of software based on this model was given through a practical application in the software development of the vending machine. It is proved by practice that the efficiency of software development and the quality of software can be improved by using this model.4. By analyzing the essence of the above-mentioned software architecture, the components of software architecture and the relations between the components were proposed. The modeling method of Aspect-Oriented software system based on the proposed software architecture model was discussed by using UML and formal method.5. One of the key technologies to obtain AO design is to design and realize Aspect Weaver. The approach to realize Aspect Weaver using the general development tools is discussed in this paper and an Aspect Weaver based on C Language was realized.6. By introduing the idea of AO and extreme programming (XP) into Rational Unified Process (RUP), an Aspect-Oriented eXtreme Unified Process (AOXUP) frameworke was proposed and the core flow diagram of AOXUP was desgined. Practical application in software development of vending machine showed that the proposed framework makes the complexity of the software development process decreased and the management of development process turns easy.Finally, the problem still existing and the future research direction were summarized, and the prospect of AO was elaborated.