Integrating third-party devices into automation systems using automatically generated tests based on UML-specification

AVL List GmbH in Graz, Austria (www.avl.com) is the world’s largest privately owned and independent company for the development of powertrain engineering with internal combustion engines as well as instrumentation and test systems. It was founded in 1948 and it has a staff of 2400 employees in many countries in the world. The activities of AVL comprise the three divisions ‘Powertrain Engineering’, ‘Engine Instrumentation and Test Systems’ and ‘Advanced Simulation Technologies’. AVL is, among other organizations, a member of ASAM e.V. association (www.asam.de), which main objective is the advancement of standardization for automation and measuring systems. ASAM stands for Association for Standardization of Automationand Measuring Systems. The ASAM standard has identified subsystems within automation and measuring systems as well as standard interfaces between these subsystems. One of these interfaces, called GDI (Generic Device Interface, see [1] and [2]), defines the connection to measurement devices and intelligent subsystems. In cooperation with the Institute for Technical Informatics (ITI) at the University of Technology in Graz (www.iti.tu-graz.ac.at), I have started my Ph.D. studies. ITI was founded in 1987. Research at the institute is focused on the investigation of computer architectures for embedded real-time systems, i.e. on specialized computer architectures, which are designed to integrate performance, predictability and intelligent behavior. The main goal is to define a way to integrate future ASAM-GDI device drivers and devices into proprietary automation systems. The ASAM-GDI specifies interfaces to real-time subsystems, which consist of event-driven and cyclic programs typically thought of in a procedural and not object-oriented way. They run on variety of platforms and operating systems and require real-time services that are not supported by technologies such as CORBA and (D)COM. ASAM-GDI device drivers are portable since they are using calls to standard ANSI-C libraries and services provided by ASAM-GDI Platform Adapter (timing, memory, etc.), which has features similar to those of virtual machines. Device drivers expose standard generic interface, which describes the access to constructs that are common to all device drivers. Using these common constructs, a manufacturer can describe specific device driver functions in a separate ASCII document called Device Capability Description (DCD). DCD uses a specific language (see [1]) in order to define constructs, which can be instantiated and used via GDI interface. In the paper "UML Extension for ASAM-GDI Device Capability Description" that will be presented in the technical program of the <> 2000 conference ([3]), it was shown how these constructs can be modeled using UML notation and its extension mechanisms (see [5] and [7]). The UML description of DCD provides not only a standard graphical notation and exchange text format (XMI, see [4]), but also a possibility to extend it with additional UML features (e.g. OCL constraints (see [6]) and inheritance) not supported in the current definition of the DCD. In order for the DCD to be a contract between the automation system and the device driver (client-supplier relationship [15] and [10]) it is necessary to add additional formalism and usage description in the DCD, which are essential when integrating third-party software and hardware (e.g. OCL constraints and scenarios). Particularly, it must be taken care of real-time behavior of such software-hardware subsystems. The current work specifies how these behavior characteristics can be described using UML sequence diagrams. These scenarios can then be used by the client as descriptions of test scenarios (test suite) where: all OCL constraints are evaluated and checked ([14]) a clear real-time behavior is described, evaluated and verified a series of test cases is defined and executed