Product Description

"This book will almost certainly become a seminal work in this field...the one book everyone will want to have both as a tutorial and as a reference." --Larry McAlister, Senior Systems Architect, ENSCO, Inc. The global demand for real-time and embedded systems is growing rapidly. With this increased demand comes an urgent need for more programmers in this realm; yet making the transition to real-time systems development or learning to build these applications is by no means simple. Real-time system designs must be written to meet hard and unforgiving requirements. It is a pursuit that requires a unique set of skills. Clearly, real-time systems development is a formidable task, and developers face many unique challenges as they attempt to do "hard time." Doing Hard Time is written to facilitate the daunting process of developing real-time systems. It presents an embedded systems programming methodology that has been proven successful in practice. The process outlined in this book allows application developers to apply practical techniques--garnered from the mainstream areas of object-oriented software development--to meet the demanding qualifications of real-time programming.Bruce Douglass offers ideas that are up-to-date with the latest concepts and trends in programming. By using the industry standard Unified Modeling Language (UML), as well as the best practices from object technology, he guides you through the intricacies and specifics of real-time systems development. Important topics such as schedulability, behavioral patterns, and real-time frameworks are demystified, empowering you to become a more effective real-time programmer. The accompanying CD-ROM holds substantial value for the reader. It contains models from the book, as well as two applications that are extremely useful in the development of real-time and embedded systems. The first application, a UML-compliant design automation tool called Rhapsody (produced by I-Logix), captures analysis and design of systems and generates full behavioral code for those models with intrinsic model-level debug capabilities. The second application, TimeWiz, can analyze the timing and performance of systems and determine the schedulability of actions in multitasking systems. 0201498375B04062001

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #704928 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 749 pages

From the Back Cover

"This book will almost certainly become a seminal work in this field...the one book everyone will want to have both as a tutorial and as a reference."
--Larry McAlister, Senior Systems Architect, ENSCO, Inc.

The global demand for real-time and embedded systems is growing rapidly. With this increased demand comes an urgent need for more programmers in this realm; yet making the transition to real-time systems development or learning to build these applications is by no means simple. Real-time system designs must be written to meet hard and unforgiving requirements. It is a pursuit that requires a unique set of skills. Clearly, real-time systems development is a formidable task, and developers face many unique challenges as they attempt to do "hard time."

Doing Hard Time is written to facilitate the daunting process of developing real-time systems. It presents an embedded systems programming methodology that has been proven successful in practice. The process outlined in this book allows application developers to apply practical techniques--garnered from the mainstream areas of object-oriented software development--to meet the demanding qualifications of real-time programming.

Bruce Douglass offers ideas that are up-to-date with the latest concepts and trends in programming. By using the industry standard Unified Modeling Language (UML), as well as the best practices from object technology, he guides you through the intricacies and specifics of real-time systems development. Important topics such as schedulability, behavioral patterns, and real-time frameworks are demystified, empowering you to become a more effective real-time programmer.

The accompanying CD-ROM holds substantial value for the reader. It contains models from the book, as well as two applications that are extremely useful in the development of real-time and embedded systems. The first application, a UML-compliant design automation tool called Rhapsody (produced by I-Logix), captures analysis and design of systems and generates full behavioral code for those models with intrinsic model-level debug capabilities. The second application, TimeWiz, can analyze the timing and performance of systems and determine the schedulability of actions in multitasking systems.

About the Author

Bruce Powel Douglass is the Chief Evangelist for i-Logix, a leading producer of tools for real-time systems development. He contributed to the original specification of the UML and to the UML 2.0 as one of the co-chairs of the Object Management Group’s Real-Time Analysis and Design Working Group. Bruce consults for a number of companies and organizations, including NASA, on building large-scale, real-time, safety-critical systems. He is the author of seven other books, including Real-Time Design Patterns (Addison-Wesley, 2003) and Doing Hard Time (Addison-Wesley, 1999).

Customer Reviews

Good both in theory and practice
'Doing Hard Time' gives good coverage of common real time scenarios and problems with a lot of useful examples on how to model them using UML. I can actually use 'Doing Hard Time' to solve my real work problems. Thread synchronisation, resource sharing, schedulability are all covered. In fact, this book makes a reasonably good work on real time embedded systems without the UML-related stuff.
Regarding the sections on Analysis and ROPES, may I suggest that you read them and then plough your own furrow. I do not necessarily imply that the discussion is of no value, but I do I believe there is no substitute for real practice in these areas.
Mr. Douglass did manage to buck the trend by almost convincing me that UML Patterns have a use beyond merely demonstrating the intellectual supremacy of UML and its champions.
One residual hangover from the companion book 'Real Time UML' is the Rhapsody-specific slant, particularly in the section on statecharts. Pseudostates, IS_IN(), sendAction, orthogonal regions etc. do not appear in other commonly used modelling products; Rational Rose for example. Having said this, you do get a free Rhapsody CD to play with; this mitigates the pain of these specialisations to some extent.
'Doing Hard Time' is a big and comprehensive book. I more or less agree with the Synopsis to the effect that this is destined to become a reference work.
Anyone proficient in UML and embedded systems design at intermediate level will probably find 'Doing Hard Time' useful and interesting.

Steven Whittard-Swift, Real Time UML Modeller.

as the title suggests -
This is not a book for the novice, if your just starting out using or learning UML you would advised to read some of the 'lighter' publications on the subject, "Stevens, Pooley - Using UML" strikes a good balance between describing many of the key concepts without getting too heavy. Having said that if you are a real-time/embedded developer looking to use or already use UML and OO techniques you will be hard pressed to find a better (or bigger) book on the subject. Due to the nature of UML no one book can cover everything, although many books seem to try so don't expect this to be first and last book you will ever need on the subject, but then this is not purely a book about UML. It is a very useful if rather heavy (in more than one way) volume that does a fair job of explaining the utilisation of UML techniques in the highly specialised arena of Real-Time environments. Also check out a possible companion book "Real-Time UML: Developing Efficient Objects for Embedded Systems", it's a bit lighter.