I spent two days last week presenting Embedded Software Testing Strategies at the Minneapolis and Chicago Real-Time & Embedded Computing Conference (RTECC).
The presentations were high level with an overview of industry standards and the various recommend software testing approaches (static analysis, dynamic analysis, code coverage analysis). The feedback we got was very clear; across all industries and all standards, most development organizations are adopting these approaches to software development.
We also discussed the best practices across those software testing approaches – what companies are doing, what they are not doing, what they could and should be doing. Most of this discussion isn’t really specific to embedded software development. All software projects should be using these approaches. The thing that makes embedded development different is first, it can be harder to implement these approaches due to the complexities involved with testing on embedded devices; and second, many embedded applications are safety critical and therefore are developed using these standards that recommend, at a minimum, and mandate, in the most safety critical applications, formal software testing.
Test automation with VectorCAST makes adoption of these approaches easier and much more manageable. Not to mention repeatable, which is key especially for any organizations with a product line notion – the reuse of existing applications, in part or in whole, across multiple customer projects, multiple targets, or multiple tool chains.
During the event I talked to a good mix of existing customers and new folks who didn’t know much about VectorCAST. There were a lot of Industrial Control applications, with some Medical Devices, Avionics and other industries thrown in for good measure. We will be at some additional RTECC shows this year – check out our schedule of events online to see if we will be in your area in 2011.
This was my third trip to Minneapolis in the past five months. I have wanted to visit Mall of America since it opened in 1992 to all the media fanfare. I finally made it over there on this trip.
And yes, it’s huge! Although not the largest in the world. You can read the history of the mall on Wikipedia. Very interesting to see how it compares with other malls in the world – then and now.
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