STOOD

STOOD is a Software design tool that complies to both AADL and HOOD standards. AADL models can be defined to specify the complete host system of the applicative Software. Each identified AADL Process can then be refined down to target source code thanks to the HOOD detailed design process.

Requirements traceability

Stood includes a simple and efficient mean to insure an up to date traceability between the System and Software models and the initial requirements, that can be imported from plain text files or remote tools:

Architectural Design

Stood graphical editor is used to build architectural models of the Software and its environment (libraries, execution platform, ...). Stood graphical models do not intend to show all the details of the System or Software being developed, but aim at focusing the design effort on architectural issues. In addition, the graphical modeling languages that are supported by stood are hierarchical, which allows use of this technology for designing the architecture of large scale applications.

Instance models

Most Model Based Engineering tools enforce a graphical design of abstract entities, typically by the mean of UML Class Diagrams. For the purpose of analysis activities, and especially in the case of real-time systems, such abstract models need to be instantiated first before being processed. On the contrary, Stood offers to the designer the capability to directly model an instantiated model, from which an abstract model can be derived if necessary. Such an approach dramatically increases the capabilities of interaction between architectural design and verification activities.

Detailed Design

As a graphical design cannot be used efficiently to express all the details of a large scale System and Software model, Stood offers a dedicated solution to enrich the architectural model with all the low level details that are required to perform proper model processing such as model verification, code and documentation generation. Stood detailed design activity is based on the concept of HOOD Object Description Skeleton (ODS), that has been made fully customizable in order to support AADL properties ans user defined configurations. An ODS can be attached to each component of the architectural model. At the end of the detailed design activity, the Stood model is exhaustive and can become the reference for the application, from which consistent code and documentation can be automatically produced.

Stood design checkers

Stood encompasses a set of static model verification tools that are implemented with the LMP technology. These embedded tools take profit from th cross references tables that are automatically updated by Stood during the construction of the AADL and HOOD model. Available verification tools are:

• Cross references
• Call trees and data access graphs
• HOOD design rules checker
• AADL legality rules checker
• Software design metrics
• Schedulability analysis
• Requirements coverage analysis

In addition, user customized verification tools can be added in a "plug and play" way, so that Stood can support project specific verification activities.

Remote analysis tools

In addition to the design checkers that included in Stood, remote model analysis tools can easily be connected to Stood thanks to its AADL interface. Currently such a connection have already been developed with Cheddar, a powerful real-time performance analysis tool developed by the University of Brest, and another one is in progress with multi-agents real-time simulator that is developed in collaboration with Virtualys.

Automatic code generation

At any time during the modeling activities, it is possible to activate one of the provided automatic code generators to build a "ready to compile" set of source files and the corresponding makefile. Supported target language are Ada, C and C++. However, support of real-time operating systems in C and C++ require some customization of the code generators that are developed with the LMP technology.

Round-trip engineering and reverse engineering

When the detailed design activity has not been fully completed and that the low level coding details are not present within the ODS sections, it is possible to generate annotated source files that can be enriched by usual textual editing outside Stood, and then re-imported into the tool in order to update the design model. Additionally, legacy source code in Ada or C can be imported into Stood to create corresponding components into the design model.

Design documentation

Production of documentation is an important and time-consuming activity for most projects. With Stood, it is possible to automatically generate a full design documentation that is consistent by construction with the source code that has also been generated from the same design reference. Stood documentation tool can generate documents in PDF, HTML, RTF and MIF formats. Some existing generators can be customized and additional ones can be developed thanks to the LMP technology.