Software component technologies for automotive applications are desired due to the envisioned benefits in reuse, variant handling, and porting; thus, facilitating both efficient development and increased quality of software products. Component based software development has had success in the PC application domain, but requirements are different in the embedded domain and existing technologies does not match. Hence, software component technologies have not yet been generally accepted by embedded-systems industries.
In order to better understand why this is the case, we present two separate case-studies together with an evaluation of the existing component technologies suitable for embedded control systems.
The first case-study presents a set of requirements based on industrial needs, which are deemed decisive for introducing a component technology. Furthermore, in the second study, we asked the companies involved to grade these requirements.
Then, we use these requirements to compare existing component technologies suitable for embedded systems. One of our conclusions is that none of the studied technologies is a perfect match for the industrial requirements. Furthermore, no single technology stands out as being a significantly better choice than the others; each technology has its own pros and cons.
The results can be used to guide modifications and/or extensions to existing component technologies in order to make them better suited for industrial deployment in the automotive domain. The results can also serve to guide other software engineering research by showing the most desired areas within component-based software engineering.
2006.