>> I don't even know what that announcement [ObjecTime] means.
Oh.
ObjecTime represents an extremely high-level mode of programming, and for testing the resulting code visually. Communication is established by connecting ports on diagram boxes. State diagrams are presented graphically and interacted with directly, thereby changing underlying code. Meanwhile the actual code is always available by drilling down from any aspect of graphical representations. Cross-compiled code is communicated to actual targets running VxWorks.
Once completed, the system can be simulated by interacting with graphical objects on the screen that look like photographs of, and take on functions of, actual real-world objects - like PCS telephones or a server computer. You can crank up the system by using the mouse to dial in a number and to hit the send button. After that all the lights start blinking showing you step-by-step what happens.
Let me give you a real world example of how powerful this programming paradigm can be. Years ago I started with an ASCII file containing latitude and longitude data with associated altitude above (below) sea level covering a large portion of earth which included all of the United States. I fed the data into a programming tool called Explorer on an SGI workstation. I first loaded a "Read Module" onto the programming pallet, and set basic parameters which defined the vector representation of the data input. I then connected the output port from the Read Module to the input port of a LatLong manipulator module, which came with a bunch of dials I could tweak until I got the behavior I wanted. I connected its output to a Color Module, also with lots of dials. Finally I connected the last module to a View Module, and then energised the program. Each module lit up as it processed the data, finally ending by activating a view window in which I was able to enter and fly through a complete 3-dimensional representation of the United States and the surrounding ocean, fully color coded to depict altitude in conventional ways. If you knew what you were doing, the total time to convert raw lat, long data to an interactive fly-through would be 15 minutes starting from scratch. To do the same thing in directly in C++ would take forever, unless you were a wiz using OpenGL. If so, the time would reduce to days, weeks or months, depending on your skills.
ObjecTime does something similar, but with much more technical sophistication, flipping from various graphical representations depicting state diagrams, message flow, simulated action, or just raw code. ObjecTime is a neat programming paradigm that demos beautifully. It answers the question: "If C++ is an object-oriented language, why can't you program in it in a completely object-oriented way." You can with ObjectTime, but only experienced engineers can answer how important that is to time-to-market. For example, quickly programming most of the code of a typical embedded application, and seeing that it appears to work functionally, may be nice, but it may conceivably account for a only fraction of the programming development effort. Most of the effort still may be given to dealing with various levels of communication protocols and timing issues, none of which would be helped by pretty ObjecTime graphics. This is the unavoidable domain of WindView , Stethoscope and a slew of 3rd party tools.
ObjecTime does not yet produce Java code, preferring C++, but it will soon. As I indicated before, you can target any RTOS you want, as long as it is VxWorks.
Allen |
