AUTOSAR Meeting – Rhapsody TechBlog

The planning was to have a more quiet week with less travelling. As usual, this did not work out well. As my good friend Bruce always says: The difference between theory and praxis is a lot larger in praxis than it is in theory. No problem, I’m used to that.

On Tuesday, at least that is what Clemens thought, we had a common AUTOSAR Meeting. We are AUTOSAR Premium Member (by proxy of Sodius) so we visit the meetings and we try to influence the process of the AUTOSAR specification.

So on Tuesday morning very early we drove from the apartment in Bückeburg to dSpace in Paderborn where the meeting was held.

There it turned out that Clemens made a tiny mistake. He assumed that all meetings had the same footprint during the week which was wrong. (As _I_ always say: Assumption is the mother of all f***-ups) So after a Tuesday full of very very in-depth AUTOSAR workgroup meetings (and a nice lunch, thanks dSpace!) we drove back to the apartment just to go up very early again on Wednesday to visit the meeting we wanted to visit….

Anyway… shit happens. This way Clemens and I had time to discuss the Willert AUTOSAR solutions. Basically there are 2 AUTOSAR solutions, Classic and Adaptive.

Classic is for targeted at smaller controllers and very static environments. Base is that many system information and software (SW-C, Software Component) information is captured in an XML structure (ARXML) Tools can read that structure and use the information in there to configure themselves and to export their own added information to other tools.

Adaptive is targeted at larger systems that have dynamic components. Base is a Linux environment with many specs for security. It will (amongst others) be used by ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems)

What does that has to do with us? Well, Rhapsody is a tool as well and it is, out of the box, capable of reading and writing these ARXML files. You can then add information and work with the provided information. We think, however, that this solution is not applicable and scalable enough for a lot of customers. So we visit the meetings and have access to the AUTOSAR information to be able to create our own simplified AUTOSAR profile. (Apple Style, or better: Jobs Style, keep it as simple as possible, hide the complex stuff, make it usable for everybody but also make the complex stuff still accessible for Guru’s)

What we basically do with Classic is that we import ARXML and convert it to UML Elements right away. In that way we can use “normal” UML to develop AUTOSAR SWC’s.

Adaptive is very new and in early stages of definition. So there is a lot to do for us in that area, not only in profiles and frameworks but we can do a lot there in Rhapsody modeling, at least that is what we think.

So in the next weeks we have a lot to do. Clemens and I will be cooperating in creating / improving the Willert AUTOSAR Solution!

Happy modeling with Rhapsody

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

The Willert AUTOSAR Team (Clemens Maas and me) regularly visit the AUTOSAR meetings. (See: AUTOSAR WebSite)

Since our successful introduction of Rhapsody @ Marquardt (See: Referenzstudie (German) ) we do more and more Automotive. The increase of software in cars is helping us to more and more Automotive customers that are all struggling to create their software in time and without (greater) errors.

AUTOSAR is the Automotive worlds standard to improve software development. It is an organisation that is founded by the major (mostly German) Car manufacturers. You can become a member and in that way cooperate and contribute to the software standard.

What does this have to do with Rhapsody? Good question…. I’d say: everything. With Rhapsody (UML or SysML) you can also improve your software quality, time to market, re-use and more. The combination of both worlds is, however, not really easy.

Many AUTOSAR artefacts look like UML or SysML artefacts but are different. Rhapsody is used to store everything in its own database (not a real database but it’s own file format) and not used to export stuff to cooperate with other tools like MatLab. This is something that is defined in AUTOSAR, the ARXML files that you exchange on all levels for information interchange between tools.

Rhapsody has an AUTOSAR profile that allows the import and export of ARXML files. When you want to use Rhapsody for Architecture you can then export your Rhapsody model as ARXML to do further work in other tools. The other way around is also possible, you can draw your architecture in a Vector or Elektrobit tool, export ARXML, import that in Rhapsody and then create RIMBOs to add behavioral elements.

Sounds complicated and… unfortunately…. it is. We at Willert have designed an “AUTOSAR light” solution that allows the use of Rhapsody on a much simpler level. We import ARXML but convert all items to standard UML items. You can add behavior in a normal Rhapsody way, generate code and… it works. in the current version you have to do some stuff by hand but we are working on automating that as well.

So….back to Fjällbacka… a very nice town, we can recommend a visit!