Doing Hard Time: Developing Real-Time Systems with UML, Objects, Frameworks, and Patterns (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series) (Hardcover)

by Bruce Powel Douglass (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Doing Hard Time: Developing Real-Time Systems with UML, Objects, Frameworks, and Patterns provides an excellent guide to using today's cutting-edge software-engineering techniques to develop software for embedded systems.

Author Bruce Powel Douglass begins by championing the advantages of objects for embedded development and then shows off basic UML document types. Next he addresses the difficulties of writing embedded systems (which are used in hospitals, aircraft, nuclear power plants, and other life-or-death environments). He looks at the restricted resources of embedded hardware and design issues regarding memory management and event handling.

The book expertly discusses the difference between the reliability and safety of software. (It describes the use of a number of patterns that can be used to provide safe operation in the event of single-point failure of a system.)

Rapid Object-Oriented Process for Embedded Systems (ROPES) finds its way to the heart of the text, a development process tailored to real-time software. Besides an introduction to iterative software development, the author walks the reader through the steps required for analysis, design, and eventual implementation of real-time software. The samples (which include several medical devices and a small air traffic control system) are exceptionally rich in detail and often use advanced aspects of UML notation.

Later sections concentrate on the latest in pattern design for embedded software used to manage threads and schedulability. The book closes with a tour of dynamic modeling, real-time frameworks--specifically, the I-Logix Rhapsody Object Execution Framework (OXF)--and details of the Rhapsody modeling tool. In all, Doing Hard Time delivers real technical expertise for any potential embedded software developer in a thorough and digestible format. --Richard Dragan

Product Description
Presents an embedded systems programming methodology that has been proven successful in practice. This process allows applications developers to apply practical techniques, garnered from the mainstream areas of object-oriented software development, to meet the qualifications of real-time programming. CD-ROM included. DLC: Embedded computer systems--Programming.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 749 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (May 21, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201498375
• ISBN-13: 978-0201498370
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #798,010 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Hard Times "Doing Hard Times", July 19, 2000

By	Arthur Schwarz (Detroit, MI) - See all my reviews

The book appears to be a testament to "why I am good" rather than a description of the topic at hand. Editorially, figures don't match text, grammar is expansive and lacks understandability, it is difficult to determine whether words used are used in their English or technical sense, and the use of words requiring dictionary lookup is laudable in grade schools somewhat suspect in a book of this caliber (try 'reify'). Technically little scholarship is shown. The section titles are good, the author often strays from them. For analysis of embedded systems, trivial results are stated and no attention is given to their derivation nor to analysis or references to analysis. Little attention is paid topics beyond their brief statement. Much time is wasted on examples which show the authors work engagements but which do not illustrate the point at hand. Critical topics (for embedded systems) need greater attention and technical analysis rather than restating obvious results and hand-waving (tasking, inter-task message passing, event disposition, etc). The employment of statecharts in situations that it is unsuited to is difficult to understand. The placement and analysis of statecharts within the context of UML, and the technical and organizational difficulties and advantages of statecharts within the context of UML need some discussion.

The obvious needs discussion and scholarly treatment, analytical results, including mathematical formulas, and not restatement and explanation by (generally poor) example.

A terrible, terrible book which needs scholarship for it's improvement. Full of pointless examples and lack of technical discussion.

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too wide and too optimistic?, February 26, 2001

By	Babak A. Farshchian (Trondheim, Norway) - See all my reviews

I read this book as a first introduction to OO real time computing. I liked the introduction that covers the three topics of OO, RT systems and fault tolerance (though it does not connect the three topics in any sense). I gave up reading the book after the chapter on method, though I skipped through the remaining chapters. The rest of the book was mainly old stuff on waterfall models and OOA/OOD. The whole book was also very commercial and connected to a specific product from the company that the author works for. There was no comparison to other (in my opinion superior) methods and tools.

Instead of buying this book I would recommend you to buy an established book on real time systems and an established book on OO. You will end up spending less money and get a better overview of the two fields by reading fewer pages.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for anyone working in real-time embedded, July 12, 1999

By A Customer

Wow! And I thought Real-Time UML was good! Doing Hard Time is everything Real-Time UML is plus so much more. I really liked the easy-to-read but in-depth coverage of the "hard stuff" of real-time and embedded systems.

What's special about this book: The coverage of safety critical systems is unparalleled -- safety explained in terms of design patterns and key concepts and how to do this using object methods. The development process in Chapter 4 on ROPES shows how to effectively apply UML to think about, design and construct real-time systems. Chapter 11 explains the difficult concepts of timeliness and gives ways to guarantee schedulability. I've looked at other books on that topic and they're filled with really ugly math which makes for a difficult read. This book explains those concepts in an easy going way. The chapters on behavioral patterns covers "design patterns" for wiring together state machines to solve commonly occurring behavioral issues. I also really liked the chapter on real-time frameworks; it really clarified a number of things that confused me.

This book has information that is either not available elsewhere or, if it is, is very hard to track down and is very opaque read. I've read a lot of books in this genre -- and this is clearly the best. I can hardly wait to apply it on my current project.